Tag Archives: Cloud

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

Fog-Shrouded Trees and Ridges, Yosemite Valley

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Fog-Shrouded Trees and Ridges, Yosemite Valley
Fog-Shrouded Trees and Ridges, Yosemite Valley

Fog-Shrouded Trees and Ridges, Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

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

Tree-Covered Ridge, Mist

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Ridge and Fog, Yosemite Valley
Ridge and Fog, Yosemite Valley

Tree-Covered Ridge, Mist. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mist from an autumn storm obscures trees growing on a steep ridge near the rim of Yosemite Valley.

Since I’ve written about this series of photographs of cloud- and fog-shouded subjects in Yosemite Valley several times during the past week, I’ll keep the background short on this one. I used a long lens to isolate small scenes in which the clouds of an autumn storm alternately hid and (sometimes barely) revealed trees, cliffs, and rocky spires along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

In a few of the photographs I was thinking about how close I could get to having very little or almost no detail in the photograph and still make it work. Here the only real detail is in the diagonal of trees and rocks that is mostly obscured by the clouds, with only a few bits of tree being a bit darker. What I’m thinking of is more along the lines of suggesting the presence of the bit of cliff and trees than actually trying to show it explicitly.

This is, for me at least, a tricky thing! The temptation is to boost contrast in post to get more definition from the tree shapes, but that quickly leads to something that has a very different mood than that of the actual scene – and which can easily look phony. I think I’m heading in a direction I like here, but I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I have a chance to try a print in a week or so.

(By the way, if your monitor is even a little bit “off,” you may see some colorations in this monochrome image that aren’t really there. Sorry! :-)

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.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds

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Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds
Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds

Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds from an autumn storm drift among trees and spires along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

This is another in the series of photographs of mist and clouds and trees and cliffs during an autumn storm in Yosemite Valley. Here the clouds float among trees and spires along the rim of the Valley. I was looking for something very much like this as shot in the Valley, and here I spotted an interesting angle in the valley rim and then waited as the clouds floated in and out of the scene for a moment during which just enough of the detail of rocks and trees would be revealed for a moment.

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 | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

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

Forest and Evening Fog

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Forest and Evening Fog
Forest and Evening Fog

Forest and Evening Fog. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog drifts among forest trees of Yosemite Valley.

Yes, this was shot from Wawona Tunnel View…in the evening… while standing in a line of dozens of other photographers. Sigh. :-)

I’ve written before that I do not automatically go to Tunnel View in the evening. However, if I think something special might happen and I don’t have another subject in mind I will sometimes join the tripod line. (I also sometimes find myself there on odd evenings when almost no one else is there, but that is a different story.) On this late-October day I had been having a great time photographing the misty, cloudy, and sometimes rainy landscape – perhaps among my favorite photography conditions in the Valley. As evening approached, I was pretty certain that the wet conditions and the falling temperatures would cause fog to appear among the trees on the Valley floor close to sunset, and I have some ideas about photographs of trees in this fog that I wanted to try.

So I went to Tunnel View, put a very long lens on my camera, and queued up along the stone wall at the overlook. Because I did not plan to photograph the traditional “valley view” at all, I did not worry too much about where I was in this throng – and I ended up in a spot from which the familiar view was slightly obstructed. But that was OK since I was going to be pointing my lens down. This fog is not an unusual phenomenon, but it is different every time it occurs. Sometimes it builds up high enough to hover around the upper reaches of El Capitan. Sometimes there will just be thin wisps up the center of the Valley. Sometimes it is almost stationary and sometimes it moves quickly. On this evening it started out slowly and somewhat thin, but soon a breeze began blowing the moist air up from the west and a long ribbon of fog developed along the north side of the Valley floor, and I focused my attention along the borders near the edges of the fog.

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 | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email