Tag Archives: cliff

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

Forest And Cliffs, Evening

September 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees, lit by evening light, ascend granite cliffs in the Yosemite National Park back-country.

From September 14 through September 21 I spent eight days on the trail in the back-country of Yosemite National Park, starting and ending at Tuolumne Meadows, taking time to photograph some of the areas I passed through. I was fortunate to be able to join up with a group of five outstanding Yosemite photographers on all but the last day – they were to remain in the high country for several more days after I left.

On the second evening of the trip I walked to a nearby rocky area to photograph, well, rocks – granite slabs, actually, that are marked by reddish deposits and broken up by trees struggling to grow in cracks and small pockets of soil in the rock. I also wanted to photograph a nearby section of the Tuolumne River as it descended through some steep areas of granite as it entered a narrower section of canyon. I started working perhaps an hour and a half or so before sunset, and as actual sunset approached I looked up from these subjects to see the light from the lowering sun beginning to backlight trees high on a cliff above my position and to angle across the edges of the cliffs themselves. I switched gears – and lenses – and began to work on finding compositions in this rocky terrain, seen through a bit of haze and lit by increasingly warm light.

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

Granite Domes and Trees, Morning

August 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Morning light on trees and glaciated ridges, Yosemite National Park.

It is now 11:23 p.m. PDT on Friday, August 12… and I just realized a few moments ago that I neglected to schedule the posting of a new photograph today! Before I left for Yosemite on this past Wednesday I thought I had placed a photograph in the queue for automatic posting today, but apparently not. As long as I complete this post in the next half hour or so, I won’t miss posting my daily photograph!

I made this photograph early today (Friday, August 12) as the first light was striking the glaciated ridges near Olmsted Point. I had arrived early enough to climb far up on the granite slopes above the famous overlook before the sun came up – I had a plan to photograph some of the solitary trees high on these granite slabs as the first light struck them. I accomplished that, and as I began to descend from this area I decided to make a few more photographs while I was up there. Across the nearby canyon is another ridge that is topped by the glacial erratics, the solitary boulders sitting on top of the rounded ridges and just about anywhere else in this part of Yosemite. The early light was coming across from the left and striking the tops of these ridges, but it had not yet struck the huge face of Clouds Rest, seen behind them.

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

Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome

August 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A weathered juniper tree grows high on the granite face of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park.

This is another “take” on the same juniper tree high up on the slopes of Pywiack Dome that was seen in another photograph of this area that I posted earlier this week. I went through a process of “refining” the photograph that I described in the earlier post, and this was the interpretation that I came up with right before the landscape orientation version that I posted earlier. Unlike that photograph, this one frames the area of the dome containing the tree more tightly.

The color balance is a bit different in this one, also. I thought about that quite a bit, at first feeling that the coloration should be essentially identical since the images were made at about the same time and include some of the same subject matter. But the more I thought about it – and the more I experimented with the results of trying for uniformity – the more I felt that the two photographs are different images and that different interpretations make sense.

These trees never cease to amaze me. I often come across what are evidently very old trees that seem to grow almost straight out of solid rock, and only a closer inspection reveals that roots have grown tightly into small and unlikely cracks and weaknesses in the granite. That this tree should have managed to take root half way up the side of this large dome is even more amazing, much less that it managed to avoid growing into the stunted and twisted sort of shape that is so common among such trees.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Morning, San Francisco Bay

July 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog covers Oakland and the East Bay Hills as hazy sun illuminates sailboats and ships on San Francisco Bay beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.

This photograph was made from high in the Marin Headlands, after hiking up to the hill above Battery 129 near the high point on Conzelman Road, the scenic route that climbs this ridge above the Golden Gate. I had earlier shot a similar scene from a spot just a bit lower, but by now the morning fog and haze was clearing enough to allow a bit more sun to light up the waters of the Bay and to reveal a subtle blue color. (Later the blue would be much deeper, and earlier it had been nearly gray.) This particular shade of blue is one of the things I liked about this scene on this particular day.

The hill at lower left is part of the Marin Headlands and drops from the road almost straight down to the water. The small bit of land intruding into the frame on the left just above the wake of a boat is Alcatraz Island. Beyond that is Treasure Island and its companion, Yerba Buena Island. The latter is crossed by the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, leading to Oakland which is just barely visible under the fog over the East Bay hills. Near the upper right is a tiny bit of one of the piers along the San Francisco waterfront.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: cliff

Forest And Cliffs, Evening

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Granite Domes and Trees, Morning

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Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome

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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.