Tag Archives: crest

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fall Color, Parker Bench and Parker Canyon

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Fall Color, Parker Bench and Parker Canyon - Fall color from aspens, brush, and lowland trees on Parker Bench below Parker Canyon, eastern Sierra Nevada
Fall color from aspens, brush, and lowland trees on Parker Bench below Parker Canyon, eastern Sierra Nevada

Fall Color, Parker Bench and Parker Canyon. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 16, 2011. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fall color from aspens, brush, and lowland trees on Parker Bench below Parker Canyon, eastern Sierra Nevada.

Parker Bench is an area above the northern portion of the June Lakes Loop, lying below Parker Lake and the canyon topping out at Parker Pass. The area is visible from highway 395, though driving up closer reveals a lot more details. The canyon itself appears to be very rugged, and I’m not even certain that a trail climbs it to the pass. I do know that the main route over the pass does not descend the canyon, instead turning south and climbing higher after it crosses the pass to exit Yosemite National Park. I’ve hiked to the pass quite a few times, and explored the country on the Yosemite side of the pass extensively.

This can be a good area to view almost the full transition of aspen color as it moves gradually downward from the highest elevations and out into Owens Valley and similar sage brush country areas. In this photograph extensive groves of aspens in full seasonal color are visible on the slopes to the right of the creek draining the canyon, and in a location that is not far from Parker Lake. When this photograph was made in mid-October of 2011, the color had worked its way down below the forest and out into the relatively low areas along the creeks descending from the higher peaks. Right in front of the camera there are bright colors from brush and a few aspens. Also note the unusually heavy snow up near the pass. October 2011 was an unusual month in that it started with a series of three relatively strong winter-type storms sweeping across the Sierra, closing a number of passes and dropping a foot or more of snow in places.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Sierra Nevada

Parker Lake and Parker Canyon, Fall

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Parker Lake and Parker Canyon, Fall - Aspens in fall color in the lower reaches of Parker Canyon above Parker Lake, Sierra Nevada
Aspens in fall color in the lower reaches of Parker Canyon above Parker Lake, Sierra Nevada

Parker Lake and Parker Canyon, Fall. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 16, 2011. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspens in fall color in the lower reaches of Parker Canyon above Parker Lake, Sierra Nevada

As the fall aspen color season comes along, I’ll share photographs of this annual phenomenon, both from the current year and from past seasons. This photograph comes from last year, the autumn of 2011. That was a fall color season to remember in the eastern Sierra Nevada range, and for several reasons. First it was unusual in that several strong winter-type storm fronts swept over the Sierra during the first week or so of October. While an occasional front that drops a light coating of high elevation snow is not unusual this time of year, a series of storms that dropped up to a foot of snow in many places was a surprise. (Many of us were perhaps tricked into thinking that this was an indication of a third consecutive heavy precipitation year – but we were certainly wrong about that!) So a scene that might typically hold little or no snow at this mid-October date does have snow, and a fairly low elevations as well. Second, the development of aspen color took a few interesting twists and turns that year. There was some good color early on up high, but then the snow came and both made it less accessible and took down some of the early leaves. So this early color was interrupted, only to return in grand form a week or so later – and there was a lot of wonderful color by the middle of the month when I made this photograph.

Parker Canyon is an area that I identify with a bit. I often hike out to Parker Pass on the Sierra crest from inside Yosemite – it is a nice day hike that gets into some lovely alpine country and even is conducive to one of my favorite pastimes in the high country, cross-country hiking. So I’ve been at the pass a number of times… but have never gone much beyond it. I understand that the trail over Parker Pass heads into some very high country once it leaves the park boundaries. In addition, I’ve often looked to this area for some later color when I head to the eastern Sierra to photograph the aspens, where the area known as “Parker Bench” can have some great aspen stands. On this day I hiked from the end of the road up to Parker Lake, joining lots and lots of other folks out to see the fall color show. I did the hike more or less in the middle of the day, following early morning shooting and passing the time before the later light, and I did not necessarily expect to find a lot of interesting light to photograph. However, there were clouds! And these clouds muted the harsh midday light and added some interesting shadows to the landscape. In addition, the dark rock of Parker Canyon created an appealing contrast with the bright and colorful aspens near the upper shore of Parker Lake.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Deer Graze Below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Tuolumne Meadows

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Deer Graze Below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Tuolumne Meadows - Deer graze in the early evening in Tuolumne Meadows below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park.
Deer graze in the early evening in Tuolumne Meadows below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park.

Deer Graze Below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite National Park, California. July 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Deer graze in the early evening in Tuolumne Meadows below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park.

Although compressed here by the use of the telephoto lens, this view of Tuolumne Meadows, Lembert Dome, and Mount Dana is one of the first that you might see when arriving at the Meadows from the west – at least if you happen to look towards Dana after dropping to the meadow and rounding the first gentle curve to the left past a group of trees that grows along the roadside and at the edge of the meadow. This alignment of Lembert and Dana is one that I always look for when I arrive.

Perhaps because I often see it when I arrived at Tuolumne, and because I most often arrive in the morning, my mental image of this view usually includes haze that makes the view of Dana opaque, especially in when the haze is back-lit by this morning light. Oddly, I don’t often look across the meadows from this point of view during the evening, when I suppose I’m more likely to be further up the meadow and closer to the Tuolumne River itself. On this July evening, however, I did happen to be here just before sunset. (I don’t recall for sure, but I’ll bet that I was returning from photographing somewhere to the west.) When I saw that familiar alignment of Lembert and Dana in the evening light, I stopped. I don’t think that I noticed the herd of deer along the meadow at the bottom of the frame until I was set up.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Tuolumne River, Alpenglow

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Tuolumne River, Alpenglow - The Tuolumne River curves through Tuolumne Meadows as alpenglow colors that landscape, Yosemite National Park.
The Tuolumne River curves through Tuolumne Meadows as alpenglow colors that landscape, Yosemite National Park.

Tuolumne River, Alpenglow. Yosemite National Park, California. July 7, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Tuolumne River curves through Tuolumne Meadows as alpenglow colors the landscape, Yosemite National Park.

I have written previously about several topics that connect to this photograph. For one, I have described a certain type of atmospheric condition in the Sierra that may bring astonishingly intense evening colors when clouds above the mountains end to the west of the range, allowing the final sunset light to illuminate the clouds from beneath. On this evening it looked like all the pieces were in place for such a show, but I know that while these conditions make the light possible, they do not guarantee it – and on this evening there was a wonderful, subtle glow just after sunset… but not the imagined overwhelmingly brilliant light.

For another, I have written about scoping out a shot ahead of time, sometimes earlier the same day and sometimes weeks, months, or even years earlier. Earlier on this day I decided to take a walk in the meadow without my camera gear, with precisely the task of “scoping out” in mind. I wandered around somewhat aimlessly, following my nose this way and that to investigate lots of interesting things and places that I might have passed by on a more purposeful hike. Before heading back to camp for an early dinner I had selected three possible subjects that I thought might work well.

I have also written about how little control we have over our subjects when shooting landscape. We can anticipate and guess and be fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time with the right gear and the skill to know how to use it, along with the ability to see what is happening – but in the end, in many ways, we take what we can find and work with it. When I arrived back in the evening an hour or so before the time of interesting light, I had a feeling that the first subject I had seen earlier might be the most promising. This was a scene that placed Lembert Dome between a couple of groups of trees and a bit of the river when viewed from the middle of a footbridge crossing the Tuolumne. I arrived and set up and began the planned wait for what I hoped would be very interesting light. However, as sunset approached, I could see that the shot I had planned was not going to work in the light that I found myself working with. So, on the spur of the moment and acting essentially intuitively, I picked up the tripod and camera and moved to a nearby spot and rather than making a tightly focused shot of the dome, I zoomed way out to include a gentle curve in the Tuolumne, a sandbar, and a line of foreground trees, and I made this photograph of the much subtler-than-expected post sunset light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.