Tag Archives: clearing

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

Glacial Erratics, Near Glen Aulin

November 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three glacial erratic boulders atop a granite dome near Glen Aulin, Yosemite National Park.

Looking for something to photograph one evening during my September back-country photography trip into the Glen Aulin and McCabe Lakes area of Yosemite National Park, I climbed up from our camp site to the top of this small granite dome or “whaleback” above the valley of Glen Aulin. The dome is merely the most open and exposed portion of a ridge of more durable rock that rises a ways up the slope from near where we were camped, and from its “summit” I had a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding landscape as the day came to an end.

When I first arrived at this spot more than an hour earlier, the sky was almost completely clouded over. This was one of those situations in which the immediate photographic prospects seemed quite limited, with gray skies and murky atmosphere, but with some potential for interesting things to happen if the clouds thinned as sunset approached. So I decided to stick around in this spot rather than wandering around looking for something else, and in the end the clouds did thin. Before I made this photograph, one of the last of the evening, I had managed to find a range of subjects as the light changed: the light from breaks in the clouds began to move across a forest to my right and light a small prominence nearby; light coming over the ridge at the far right back-lit some haze behind trees on a lower ridge that was closer to me; and finally the remaining clouds took on a bit of color right as the sun dropped below the horizon.

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: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Three Pelicans, Blue Sky

June 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Three pelicans fly along the California Pacific coastline under clearing fog and blue sky.

To my surprise, I got to feed my pelican obsession on Memorial Day. As we drove up the coast north of Santa Cruz, where the road frequently follows the edges of coastal bluffs where they drop off into the Pacific, we started to notice larger than usual groups of pelicans heading north and riding the updrafts next to the cliffs. Having watched these birds many times before, I have learned a bit about their “traffic patterns,” so I suspected that if we went a bit further north to where the road comes down at a beach where a creek enters the ocean that we might encounter the same birds as they, too, dropped down to the water’s edge.

My hunch turned out to be right, and a few minutes after we arrived I caught a glimpse of the distant flock coming around the edge of the bluffs to the south and starting to descend toward the beach. They approached over the edge of the surf, but then turned toward the land as they started to climb again to rise above the next bluff to the north – and for a few seconds I was able to track and photograph them against the thinning fog and blue sky.

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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: Ocean & Coast

Sailboats, Pacific Ocean

June 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Sailboats under spring skies along the Pacific Ocean coast south of San Francisco.

Memorial Day was a day of nearly perfect weather along the California coast between Santa Cruz and Point Reyes. (When we eventually got to Point Reyes it was nearly windless – and anyone who has been there knows how rare that is.) We started in Santa Cruz for breakfast and then headed north up Highway 1 along the coast. A ways north of Santa Cruz we came upon that zone where the high fog was just breaking up along a border with areas of blue sky. Everything, from the water to the clouds to the sky was some shade of luminous blue.

The photograph was made from a high bluff not far from Waddell Creek. We initially stopped to look for shore birds, since they fly very close to the edge of the bluff, using updrafts to travel along the coast. The high vantage point made the color of the ocean a bit deeper and made more of it visible between the near shore and the horizon. The sailboats were a surprise – I don’t usually see them along this section of the coast.

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

Fog-Shrouded Trees and Ridges, Yosemite Valley

November 18, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

As an autumn storm begins to clear, fog and mist swirls among trees and ridges along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

After a few days of gaudy fall color, I am returning briefly to non-gaudy fall black and white! This is another – and perhaps the last for a while – in the series of misty and cloudy photographs from my visit to Yosemite in late October as a fall storm was passing over the Valley. I was happy when I saw that my planned visit would coincide with a storm, since I love shooting the Valley in the fall in cloudy and wet conditions. As much as I enjoy the beautiful and wam late-summer days, I find the “bad” weather a lot more interesting photographically. The Valley did not disappoint during this visit – I had light rain, clouds ringing the valley, fog both on the Valley floor and among the ridges and trees along the rim, and even some cloud-filtered sunlight.

The subject of this photograph could be any of what seems like an infinite number of scenes of cliffs and ridges and trees along the upper walls of the Valley. The specific spot isn’t important, though it was just to the west of Glacier Point. At times the clouds almost completely obscured the cliff and trees, but as they moved across the face they would periodically clear enough to make bits of the scene momentarily visible. This was another of those situations in which the landscape was emphatically not static – instead it was in a constant state of flux, and it required close and constant attention to catch the photographable moments.

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.

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