Tag Archives: cascade

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

Spring Flooding, Merced River

May 20, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

The Merced River overflows its banks during the spring runoff and floods surrounding meadows and lowlands in Yosemite Valley.

I’m tempted to go on about how the spring runoff is my favorite time of year in Yosemite Valley – but I’ve probably already written about how autumn is my favorite time, or how much I love winter in the Valley, and… :-)

In any case, there is a lot to like about spring in Yosemite Valley. For example, seasonal waterfalls that many visitors never see come to life. I believe that the thin fall across the Valley in this photograph is Sentinel Fall. There is another small one to its right in the v-shaped gully, but I do not know its name. The meadows come back to life and the trees begin to get their leaves, and there is green everywhere. Especially in a heavy snowfall year like this one, the Merced River rises as the snow begins to melt, and riverbanks overflow and meadows flood – as is happening in this photograph of a section of the river near Leidig Meadow along the north side of the Valley.

I’m surprised that there are not more photographs produced in this part of the Valley. I suppose the explanation may include the fact that few of the main iconic sights are directly visible from here, the current prohibition against parking along the road in this area, and the fact that parts of the river trail were underwater. But in the right light – which here can occur at times other than the typical early/late hours – Leidig Meadow and this curving section of the river with its shoreline trees can be very appealing, especially when the far canyon wall is muted by shadows.

I shot this a bit later in the day, not during the typical “golden hour” times at all. To get here I drove past this section of the road and walked back, alternately walking along the roadway (and occasionally leaving the narrow road as cars approached) and following the trail where it was not submerged. To make this photograph I walked down to the very edge of the rising Merced River and managed to find one spot that wasn’t too muddy.

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

Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

May 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A torrent of water from melting spring snow rushed through a rocky section of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.

During the early part of the seasonal spring snowmelt runoff, Cascade Creek is transformed into a wild and raging torrent as the lower elevation snow in the upper portion of its drainage begins to melt quickly. Contributing to the spectacular effect is the very steep path the creek follows down the walls of the Merced Canyon before it makes one final leap over a waterfall and then joins with the main Merced River.

This bit of creek is another of those places in the Sierra that I have come to know very well. There are certain places where I like to say that I know individual rocks and trees, and this is one of them. I photograph here several times each year during all seasons and in all kinds of light. But my favorite is the early morning spring light, before the sun rises high enough to directly illuminate the creek bed, when the creek is flowing madly and twisting and turning around and over boulders.

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

Rushing Water and Granite Slab, Sierra Nevada

March 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A Sierra Nevada creek, swollen from spring runoff, flows across granite slabs – Yosemite National Park.

The image and sound of spring runoff water rushing over granite slabs are common in the high Sierra. Though the scene is almost a generic one, for me it also brings to mind many very specific places and experiences throughout the range. (Some of my backpacking friends might think of a spot along Tyndall Creek on the John Muir Trail where we have camped more than once.)

The exact location of this little bit of cascading and rushing water is probably not very important – you are never far from a little scene like this if you are near almost any little creek high in the Sierra! Here the water flows mostly across very smooth rock – so smooth that you can see right through the rushing water to the rocks in many places. In this precise spot there is a weakness in the rock and a small ledge has formed, and the result is a bit of white water.

I’ll share a few technical observations about this photograph, too. First, there isn’t a sharp thing in the image! While sharp focus can be important, I don’t think it is here. (Though if you look closely, the patterns of the blurred, fast-moving water are sharp in a fuzzy sort of way. ;-) The rocks beneath the water cannot be sharp because they are blurred by the water; the water cannot be sharp since I intentionally chose a shutter speed that allowed motion blur. Second, I have to admit that I did not originally have a black and white photograph in mind when I made this exposure. I worked on it for a while in color and though I liked the motion of the water I just wasn’t happy with the coloration of the scene. I finally realized that this image wasn’t about the “reality” of the rocks and water but about creating an impression of the rushing water – and that perhaps monochrome might work. Third, this is yet another “landscape” photograph made with a lens that the “common wisdom” (which often turns out to be not so wise) would say is not a landscape lens – a 70-200mm zoom.

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

Cascade, Reflected Sunlight

February 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Sunlight reflects on granite ledges next to cascades on Tenaya Creek.

In this iteration of the “blurry-fast-moving-water-in-Sierra-creek” photograph, I was looking to cram a variety of elements into the frame – as you can see, the entire photograph is not filled with water. There is a transition from white water with flashes of sunlit light at the tops of the waves, through the water with smaller areas of foam, to water reflecting the golden late afternoon light from a cliff face on the other side of the creek, to some bits of streamside granite slabs along the lower right edge of the frame. To me, these areas of shallow water and wet rock reflecting more distant light almost have a molten quality.

One of the trickiest things about this photograph for me was dealing with the strong contrast between very blue tones in the shaded parts of the water and the very warm tones of the reflections. As every photographer knows, the light in shade can be very blue, especially when the subject is supposed to be white and is lit almost entirely by the blue sky, as is the case in parts of the turbulent water. Adjustments are necessary in order to make it look realistic and conform with the colors that our eyes tell are are there. (Our vision system is remarkable… but it is not objectively accurate!) But adjustments to the blue water, if applied to the warm tones of the reflecting granite, can end up looking bizarre and overdone in the opposite direction!

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