Tag Archives: creek

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

Bare Trees, Wall of Leaves

October 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of bare aspen trees stands in front of a grove of colorful aspens

This photograph was almost an afterthought at the end of an evening of shooting up high in an east-side Sierra canyon where many of the trees had lost their leaves, and the rest were at the brilliantly colorful phase that comes right before the leaves fall. When I came up the canyon I took a little gravel side road that passes through another grove of small but interesting trees before heading on up to the end of the road “just because it was there.” This is not an obvious photographic spot, since the trees are not large and because it can be difficult to find the right backgrounds.

There is something special about soft, evening light on fall foliage, and especially on aspens. It can produce a very intense quality of color, and the soft light shines into shadows and lowers contrast. As I moved slowly up this small roadway I could see that there was a band of quite colorful trees along the banks for the creek, and that between me and this color there was a thinner line of trees that had already lost their leaves. This let the stark trunks and branches of these trees stand out against the wall of color from the trees that still hadn’t lost their leaves.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Bridge

July 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A trip to the Big Sur coast last week got me thinking again about the photographic possibilities of that area, and about the fact that I need to photograph there more often! I’ve visited this coast since I was a child, and perhaps because it is so familiar to me I tend to overlook it, even though it is close enough that I can be there and back in less than a day.

In addition to my more recent visit, I was there much earlier this year, back in winter when we visited in late January. So, thinking about Big Sur this week, it seemed like a good time to start going back through those older photographs to see what emerged. (While I often share some photographs immediately after shooting a subject, I also like to revisit the images months or even a year or more later, when I think I can see them more clearly for what they are sometimes.) As I looked at these older photographs they seemed to me to have potential as monochrome images, and I ended up interpreting several of them that way. This photograph was made in the morning, and from a fairly iconic overlook in the upper section of the Big Sur coast, where ridge after ridge descends to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Coastal Ranch, Fog

July 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fog bank above a coastal ranch in a meadow along the Pacific Coast Highway

This little meadow, filled with yellow flowers, is in the upper section of the Big Sur coast of California, where I made a very quick trip early on the morning of the Fourth of July — there and back again before most of the holiday traffic arrived. (That traffic was completely jamming all of the area roads heading the opposite direction as I returned home.)

I was a beautiful and relative quiet early morning, with low fog hugging the coast and providing a welcome contrast to the much warmer inland weather. It also was the sort of day — foggy, with bright wildflowers — that can make a Californian temporarily forget this year’s serious drought. This ranch building sits just off the main highway at the base of a couple of small valleys leading up into the coastal mountains.

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

Granite, Falling Water

May 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A spring creek cascades across dark fractured granite, Yosemite National Park

Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road (Highway 120), which passes through the park and across the Sierra crest at Tioga Pass, opened earlier than usual this year. It was not the earliest recorded opening, but the very small snow pack of the winter season meant that in early May it looked much more like a typical June. There was some snow left on the ground, but rather than being the deep and compacted remains of months of winter snow it was mostly what was left from a single spring storm a few days earlier.

In a more typical year, a drive over this route on the opening weekend provides an experience that is, to my way of thinking, mostly about water. Not only do we get to see vast remaining snow banks holding water that will irrigate the Sierra for months to come, but the spring melt brings wild, watery scenes nearly everywhere. Waterfalls and creeks appear in places where there is almost no evidence of their existence weeks or months later. Creeks spill across the highway flood sections of it. Larger creeks and rivers overflow their banks and turn meadows into lakes. But not this year. The photograph features a small section of a larger cascade which bounces down a steep and rugged section of granite boulders. Beautiful as it is, it should look like this in late June rather than early May.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: creek

Bare Trees, Wall of Leaves

Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Bridge

Coastal Ranch, Fog

Granite, Falling Water

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