Tag Archives: creek

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens and Granite, Autumn

January 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Aspen trees with golden autumn leaves grow among boulders on a rocky eastern Sierra Nevada slope

Before my single day of eastern Sierra Nevada aspen photography this season, I had been concerned about the quality and timing of the color – and reports by some other photographers who visited just before I was there were not encouraging. Reports mentioned trees that had turned earlier than usual (true) and trees that turned without producing special color and so forth. Compounding my concerns just a bit was the fact that my schedule required me to be there a bit earlier than the time I would typically regard as being prime for aspen color. But I’d rather shoot one day of less-than-stupendous aspen color than miss the entire show, so up into the eastern Sierra above Bishop, California we drove.

I was pleased to find that there was actually a lot of great color. Some of the usual “hot spots” that people seem to flock to were perhaps not as amazing as they can be, but after photographing the aspens for some years I have found some odd little personal places where I could find good color – and in a few places color that was downright excellent. I photographed these trees rather late in the day, perhaps after many people who prefer to photograph aspens in the sun had already left. I intentionally sought out an area that I knew would be in shade since I often prefer the muted and softer light this brings. Here the trees are not quite so thick since they grow on very difficult and rocky slopes. But what they lacked in density they made up for in color!

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Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

December 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Large cottonwood trees with autumn leaves along the Escalante River, Utah

In many places like this one along the Escalante, the terrain seems to be largely a continuous repetition of one horseshoe bend after another, and each bend encourages me to want to see what will be ahead. When the river bends one way, the bottom of the canyon may be in sunlight; when it bends the other – and perhaps narrows around the apex of the bend – everything may be in deep shadow from the tall cliffs above the narrow canyon. In these bends it is often necessary to cross back and forth across the stream as the canyon narrows. (That ritual was a new one to me as a long-time Sierra Nevada hiker and backpacker. There a stream crossing or two in a day would typically be about it, and we tend to make a big deal out of them. Here you might cross a stream more than a dozen times in less than a mile!)

The location of this photograph was at one of those crossing points. The trail approached my camera position from up the canyon and around the bend along the right (from this point of view) side of the stream, crossed the river down among the trees, and then headed across a low hill to the left that skirted between the river and the base of the cliffs. When I arrived at this point and walked underneath this wildly colorful group of cottonwoods, I thought I’d like to find a way to photograph them, the river, and the dark upper canyon. So, before wading through the water I went ahead a bit and climbed up on a sort of ledge to this overlook from which I had a good view up the canyon. Because it was a partly cloudy day, the light here was in a constant state of change. When the clouds moved overhead, the canyon and the trees become quite dark. But a moment later the cloud would pass on and the sun lit the golden trees so brightly that it was almost impossible to photograph them and keep any light in the background canyon. So I watched and waited and made this exposure when the clouds partially obscured the direct sun, but still let in enough light to brighten the trees and cast soft shadows on the bank of the stream.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Canyon Reflections, Utah

November 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the surface of a slot canyon stream, Utah

Among photographers that I know, finding ways to photograph the surface of flowing river and creek water is almost a bit of a game or even an obsession. There is something very appealing about either stopping the motion of the water, or about using longer shutter speeds to let the water blur, revealing the smooth patterns of flowing water and the interesting colorations that we can otherwise easily overlook. People I know seem to have developed their own little idiosyncratic tricks for working with this subject – special shutter speeds, an eye for particular types of reflections, and so forth.

The Utah canyons are a prime place to look for interesting reflection patterns, at least in those canyons in which the water is flowing. This narrow desert canyon contained a small, burbling steam – just enough water to be interesting and dampen boots and pants legs, but not so much as to impede progress up the canyon or make shooting difficult. The trick is to look beyond the apparent surface of the water and instead learn to look for and see the reflections instead. Part of this is looking for interesting flow and ripple patterns, such as the bit of faster moving water moving diagonally across the frame in this image. Another part is to anticipate and then find sources of reflected colored light. This photograph includes several: blue from overhead sky visible above the center of the canyon, purple and burgundy from shaded cliff faces, intense orange reflected from sunlit sandstone, and bright yellow-green from cottonwood and box elder trees.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Box Elder, Bend in the Creek

November 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A Utah canyon creek winds through a narrow canyon and past a box elder tree.

This little stream and its canyon was the first place we stopped at on our late-October photographic trip through (mostly) Utah. Before this we had shot a bit in the “touristy” part of Zion NP, but this place was quite a bit more off the beaten track. Truth be told, this was also my first time wandering/wading/rock hopping my way up one of these small Southwest canyons – so it was a special bit of adventure for me, and one that I took to very quickly. Although I felt, to some extent, like I already “knew” these places from reading and seeing the work of other photographers, it was still something special to be in the place for the first time.

We began by walking up a portion of the wash through which the stream flowed after it left the canyon. I quickly discovered that here, unlike in “my Sierra,” one does not necessarily try to avoid the water – which wouldn’t really be possible anyway – but instead you walk in it, hop or wade back and forth across it, or tread the soft sand and mud along its banks. Some figure that you’ll get wet, and they wear light footwear. I went “old school” and put on a pair of Gore-Tex hiking boots and rolled up my pants enough to keep the bottoms out of the water.

The light in such places – as the veterans of such shooting know – is a complex and interesting thing. Most of the time you don’t really want direct sunlight, so you (or I, anyway) seek out shade. But you do want reflected light, coming off of the canyon walls high above, taking on the color of the rock, and diffusing down into the depths of the canyon. Contrary to my well-developed shoot-very-early-and-shoot-very-late instincts, you also typically want to shoot during the mid-morning hours and the afternoon, and if the canyon is deep enough and oriented the right direction you may even shoot right through the noon hour! What a concept: sleep in until the sun comes up, eat breakfast, and then go shoot! In this little twist in the stream, at just about the point where we turned around, the water takes on the color of the light reflected from the sandstone walls around the bend, and a single small box elder with golden leaves adds a spot of fall color.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: creek

Aspens and Granite, Autumn

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Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

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Canyon Reflections, Utah

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Box Elder, Bend in the Creek

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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.