Tag Archives: capitan

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Horsetail Fall

March 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Horsetail Fall in afternoon light, Yosemite Valley

As you may already know, Yosemite Valley’s Horsetail Fall draws visitors and especially photographers ever winter, roughly during the last half of February or so. During this period a miraculous conjunction of sunset light, a gap in the ridges to the west, and a wispy waterfall dropping over the edge of El Capitan may produce a momentary “natural firewall” for those positioned to the east of the waterfall. The sight is quite something… but in some ways it is almost more amazing to encounter hundreds of people who have traveled great distances to stand in cold or even snowy meadows to gaze upwards in hopes of seeing this ephemeral light.

I have photographed it in the past so I generally do not photograph it any more. In fact, I like to joke that one of the nice things about Horsetail Fall is that it clears the rest of the Valley of photographers in the evening! ;-) I must have confused at least a few people when I was there on the first day of March, at a time when people are still hoping to catch the phenomenon. We pulled into one of the two popular areas for viewing the fall, but in the late afternoon, well before the light was even hinting at what it could do later on. I looked up at the cliff high above and saw that recent rains had brought the fall to life, and that winds across the upper face of El Capitan were blowing the fall too and fro and carrying its wispy spray in all directions. The rock face was uniformly damp, and the late afternoon light was bright and silvery on the rock. I put a long lens on the camera and pointed it up toward this bright subject and made a few exposures as the wind whipped the falling water back and forth. Then I packed up and left… just as the evening throng of photographers was arriving and finding their positions to photograph what they hoped would be colorful sunset light.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Last Light on Snow, Fog, and Granite

March 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees, fog, and snow on the granite summit of El Capitan glow in a final beam of sunset light.

Near the beginning of March I was in Yosemite Valley for three days in conjunction with the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit. (One of my photographs is in the show.) It was a wonderful weekend in many ways. Lots of artists of all sorts were there for the opening—and for Yosemite!—and I had the chance to get together with many friends among them. It was also a time of atmospheric conditions that were spectacular in ways that interest me as a photographer – broken light, occasional rain, mist and clouds.

On this evening we went to Tunnel View since it was mostly gray down in the Valley and because there was some promise of not only drifting clouds and mist there, but also of some late day light. All of those things happened, but as the end of the day approached, the “lights went out” as the clouds to the west thickened and blocked the setting sun. I continued to shoot for a while, mostly focusing a long lens on small distant details within the scene, but I finally decided that the light was simply becoming too flat and I walked back to the car to pack up, thinking about the friends I would soon join for dinner in the Valley. At the back of the car I removed the long lens, collapsed the tripod, and was packing everything away when Patty, who was sitting the front seat and facing the valley, exclaimed, “Look at that light!” Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much, but when I looked up I saw a blood red band of light stretching across the cliffs of El Capitan on the left and Sentinel Rocks on the right. Apparently the sun had found a narrow gap in the clouds almost exactly at the point it reached the horizon far to the west. I immediately knew that this light would be gone very quickly—at best it might last a minute or two—so I worked very quickly to set up the tripod, attach the camera, and stick a long lens on it… not even looking up at the view as I worked. No time to look! I quickly moved the camera to the nearest possible shooting location and, working almost entirely intuitively, quickly picked out perhaps four different shots, each focusing on the momentarily best bit of light as the scene evolved quickly. The final bit of light was a rapidly fading stripe just across the snow- and cloud-shrouded summit of El Capitan, where the upper rocks, snow, and trees picked up the intense red light for a matter of a few seconds, and then it was gone.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Tall Trees, Meadow, Autumn

November 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tall trees grow in a row in a meadow backed by cottonwood and black oak trees with autumn foliage

I guess I just can’t help myself when it comes to photographing in this Yosemite Valley meadow area – or in similar areas, for that matter. As I’ve written before, during the time of the year when the days are shorter and the sun is lower, the light in some of these places is constantly changing – pre-sunrise and post-sunset soft “blue hour” light, early and late direct sun over the upper edges of cliffs, shadow right after dawn and before sunset and when cliffs interrupt the light during midday hours. Other changes take place on a longer cycle – the stark quality of winter, snow covering everything when winter storms arrive, morning fog, trees newly green in spring or yellow and gold in fall. And there are many more things to see than just the “landscape size” things – wildflowers, fallen leaves, frost, and more.

So, yes, I visited and revisited the meadows during this fall’s end-of-October visit to The Valley. While I often focus on the black oaks that grow in these meadows, here I decided to focus on evergreen trees. This group stands almost evenly spaced in a row. I struggled with how to deal with their height when shooting from a relatively close distance, and then realized that by not including the whole tree I could emphasize the vertical lines of their trunks and perhaps suggest the even higher parts of the trees that are not visible here.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Spring, Oaks, El Capitan Meadow

July 25, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Green grass and new oak leaves, El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley

Probably almost anyone who has photographed in Yosemite Valley much can recognize this sort of scene and perhaps even think of some favorite spots to find black oak trees with new spring growth, set in meadows and backed by forest. Even though this is a very dry year in The Valley – and in almost all of California – around the beginning of May the annual “greening” of the Valley did take place, and this photograph was made during that period.

When lit from behind and above, the light coming through the new oak leaves is luminous and the colors can take on an intensity that sometimes cause me to describe this as the “impossibly green season” in California. Perhaps it is because the state is brown, tan, or gray during so much of the year that the spring green seems so intense.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: capitan

Horsetail Fall

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Spring, Oaks, El Capitan Meadow

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.