Tag Archives: camp

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Home Away From Home

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Home Away From Home
My camp for a week in the Yosemite backcountry, September 2015

Home Away From Home. Yosemite National Park, California. September 11, 2015 © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

My camp for a week in the Yosemite backcountry, September 2015

For the past few years I have escaped to the mountains (or desert, in one case) each fall or late summer for uninterrupted photography. Perhaps a half-dozen years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to join up with the five photographers whose work appears in the book “First Light: Five Photographers Explore Yosemite’s Wilderness.” The first year I more or less ran into the group (Charles Cramer, Scot Miller, Mike Osborne, Keith Walklet, Karl Kroeber) — they were on a pack-train supported weeklong-plus trip, and had backpacked in to the same area where I ran into them briefly. The next year I “crashed” their lengthy back-country trip for a few days; the following year I was still a backpacker (they used pack animals) but I joined them for the better part of a week. Since that time I’ve joined all or part of the group for a week or more each fall. (I’m grateful to all of them for welcoming me to join them.)

This year a smaller group of us spent a bit more than a week camped at a single Yosemite backcountry location. For someone with years of backpacking experience, typically moving from place to place each day, staying in one spot for so long has been a revelation. At first I wondered how in the world there will be enough to keep me busy for a week or more. Then half way through the trip I typically realize that I have just enough time to photograph the things I decide are important to work on, only to discover on the final day or two that I could probably actually use another half week or more! The photograph shows my backcountry home for a week this past September, at the end of a granite slab that extended almost all the way to the lake that was our home base.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Morning Musings, Photographers, Tongue in Cheek

Morning Musings: Secret Lives of Landscape Photographers (9/12/14)

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Secret (Banjo) Lives of Landscape Photographers
Landscape photographers relaxing with a little banjo music. (L-R: Scot Miller, Charles Cramer, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Mike Osborne, Karl Kroeber, G Dan Mitchell)

Secret (Banjo) Lives of Landscape Photographers. Sierra Nevada, California. September 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Landscape photographers relaxing with a little midday banjo music. (L-R: Scot Miller, Charles Cramer, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Mike Osborne, Karl Kroeber, G Dan Mitchell)

I know the romantic notions about the daily lives of landscape photographers: days full of stunning golden hour light, incalculable beauties everywhere at every moment, the sublime life, rainbows, unicorns, etc. But the truth is more complex. Up before dawn and out into the cold without breakfast, shooting for hours until the light turns “blah,” then a long, boring midday period before the beautiful light returns hours later, then photographing into the frigid darkness.

It is often a struggle to find something useful to do in the backcountry during those midday hours. There are meals to eat, tents to tidy, and naps to take, but the hours are still long. We think we’ve found a solution. There’s nothing like a few hours of backcountry banjo ensemble music to make the time pass more quickly. Here the group nears the conclusion of the Adagietto movement of Mahler’s Symphony #5.

So, the next time you are in the Sierra Nevada backcountry and you pass a group of heavily laden photographers with tripods, folding chairs, and banjo cases on their backs, stop and say “hi.” ;-)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert

Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection

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Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection
Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection

Desert Sunrise, Trailer Reflection. Death Valley National Park, California. December 13, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Desert sunrise reflected on the surface of a metal trailer, Death Valley National Park

On my final day in Death Valley this past December I rose early to go re-photograph a location that I had shot much earlier in the week… and fouled up some exposures when I failed to pay attention to camera settings. Yes, it happens! I had a long homeward drive ahead of me on this day, but I knew that I had enough time to get back to this spot and make amends before leaving. Fortunately, the location in question was not terribly far from where I was camped, and instead of what can sometimes be a half hour, one, or longer drive to sunrise location… this time it was maybe 10 minutes. So I got to sleep in… until there was actually a tiny bit of light in the sky! I awoke, dressed in the tent, and went to my car to drive to my destination as the light was beginning to glow in the east.

As I left the campground I was already in “photographer mode,” but probably mostly so that I could anticipate what light conditions I might be working with a bit later – but I was focused enough to catch a quick glimpse of this interesting reflection on the side of a metal walled travel trailer along the route out of the campground. It may sound odd, but the shiny metal surfaces, the ambient blue pre-sunrise light, and the reflections of a few reddish clouds along the eastern skyline caught my attention. I stopped. I backed up. I opened the window of my car. I made a few photographs of the trailer, which most likely contained sleeping campers who would miss this lovely sunrise.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Northern California

Pier at China Camp

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Pier at China Camp
Pier at China Camp

Pier at China Camp. China Camp, California. January 6, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The old fishing pier at China Camp, California

This is another photograph from my first visit to the China Camp site along the northern San Francisco Bay, a place I had thought about visiting and photographing for several years. It was a Chinese immigrant settlement in the 1800s and apparently there was a thriving shrimp harvesting operation there. Today it is essentially ghost town, though one that has been stabilized and fixed up and which incorporates some “interpretive” facilities. I ended up there in conjunction with a “long-exposure photo walk” weekend that photographed a number of Bay Area locations over the course of three days. Though I did not participate in the entire event, I did join up with them on one morning to photograph dawn at the Golden Gate and then to travel up to China Camp.

This pier was the subject of several of my photographs on this day. It is an interesting and compelling subject in a bunch of ways. Its historical context of course makes it interesting, but there are several interesting visual aspects to it, too, and the overall feelings are of quiet and space and perhaps a bit of desolation. The pier itself is unlike most that I’ve seen. Power poles with utility lines run along its length. Ladders descend to the waterline for entry into small boats. Birds sit on top of high points along the pier. The water in the China Camp lagoon is almost completely still, and there is a great expanse of open water beyond with only low hills on the far horizon. (This quality reminded me just a bit of some views of Mono Lake.) For this photograph I used a 9-stop neutral density filter so that I could extend the exposure to last many seconds, further smoothing the surface of the water. I made about a half-dozen exposures, trying to get on in which the darned birds would hold relatively still for 5-10 seconds… and they finally cooperated on the last shot.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.