Tag Archives: cathedral

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

Gaylor Basin and the Cathedral Range, Evening

August 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Evening shadows stretch across the boulder-filled meadows and forests of Gaylor Basin with the peaks of the Cathedral Range on the skyline, Yosemite National Park.

On the first evening of my late-July four-day visit to Yosemite’s high country along Tioga Pass Road I decided to visit this favorite location of mine. It is a short (but steep!) hike from near Tioga Pass over a nearby ridge to reach this quiet basin with its many lakes, long distance views of the Cathedral Range, and the treeline terrain of rocks and trees that I believe is my very favorite in the Sierra.

I started out after my mid-afternoon “dinner” and the drive to the trailhead from my camp at Porcupine Flat. Probably because it was so late in the day, I met a fair number of people hiking back out but only saw two others in the entire basin once I arrived. I suppose this is one of the advantages of keeping odd “photographer’s hours” – while most people are heading back to camp to fix dinner, I’m heading out to catch the evening light.

In the end, I didn’t make many photographs on this evening. I mostly wandered, something I love to do in these high open basins. I walked around the first lake, passing over some still-unmelted snow, and crossed the very full outlet stream, trying to skirt the wettest portions of the meadow by looking for rocky terrain. I finally settled on an area just below the lake and made a few photographs of trees and rocks and the long, shallow valley leading toward the main trunk of the Tuolumne River and the mountains beyond. I finished just after dusk, climbed back up the ridge as darkness came on, and finished the hike back to my car with the help of the light from my headlamp.

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.

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

Mammoth Peak and Kuna Crest, Overflowing Tuolumne River

July 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mammoth Peak and the Kuna Crest loom above as the Tuolumne River overflows its banks and floods surrounding meadows on a frosty spring morning, Yosemite National Park.

As I drove from Lee Vining Canyon over Tioga Pass and toward the Tenaya Lake area early in the morning, I came to the Tuolumne River where it passes under the bridge beneath the highway in the Tuolumne Meadows area. Just at about this moment the sun was rising high enough to begin to warm the frost covered meadow, at least the parts of it that were not flooded by the high water of the Tuolumne. Overnight it had risen almost to the level of the bridge and was so high that after passing under the bridge a small portion split off and headed into the trees to the right of the main branch. In a few weeks this flooded area and its reflecting surface will be gone, and there will just be a meadow and people will hike though it.

The backlight comes across the shoulder of Mammoth Peak, the high point near the end of the long snow-covered ridge of Kuna Crest, which runs parallel to Lyell Canyon toward Donohue Pass and the Sierra Crest.

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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

Melting Ice, Gaylor Lake and the Cathedral Range

March 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The distant Cathedral Range rises above the melting ice of Gaylor Lake, Yosemite National Park.

Near the end of June last summer I hiked up here late in the day with my friends Mike and Karl. This was a somewhat unusual season in the Yosemite Sierra, in that there had been a lot of snow during the winter season and it had continued right on into spring. Consequently, the high passes opened up later than usual, and on a very late June day when things would typically be a bit more summer-ish, it looked more like late winter up here when we arrived.

I’ve visited this place quite a few times, but had never seen quite this scene before. More typically, the snow and ice are completely gone by the time I manage to get up there, and a typical visit usually entails arriving late on a warm afternoon and then hanging out in the sun while waiting for the evening light to come on. This time we were in snow before we crossed the ridge before the lake, and we had to think a bit about just how to head down toward the lake since the usual path was covered in snow. The lake itself was (obviously, judging from the photo!) still covered in ice, though melting was underway and the surface was a jigsaw puzzle of alternating blue pools and white ice.

We found a location near clumps of trees on rocky talus slopes above the lake to do our photography. In this photograph I shot down the length of the lake to mostly fill the frame with the melting ice. Beyond a small rocky rise at the end of the lake, the terrain drops off towards the meadows of the Tuolumne region, and beyond rise the peaks of the Cathedral range in early evening light.

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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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Detail, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine

September 12, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Exterior detail of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City.

After traveling uptown to the general area of Columbia University for a breakfast visit to a bakery that had been recommended to us we wandered across the street to the grounds of this famous and imposing cathedral. We began in the sculpture building next to the church, and this photograph was made from that general area, taking advantage of the soft and diffused light of this overcast day.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: cathedral

Gaylor Basin and the Cathedral Range, Evening

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Mammoth Peak and Kuna Crest, Overflowing Tuolumne River

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Melting Ice, Gaylor Lake and the Cathedral Range

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Detail, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine

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

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