Tag Archives: dark

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trillium Plant and Flower

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Trillium Plant and Flower - A trillium plant blooms during late winter in the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument.
A trillium plant blooms during late winter in the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument.

Trillium Plant and Flower. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California. March 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A trillium plant blooms during late winter in the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument.

I somehow missed the trillium bloom in the Northern California redwood forests last year, so this year I was determined to make it back again at the right time. (That time is essentially the first week or so on March.) Since I had plans to be out and about doing night photography later in the day, I decided to start early and head to redwood forests north of San Francisco to see what I could find. I was a bit concerned since it has been quite a dry winter in California.

Fortunately, it seems that a few recent light rains have been enough to get the early spring growth going. Where a week or two ago almost everything was brown, this week there were signs of green grasses and some wildflowers starting to appear. While the redwood forest was not a downright soggy as it usually is at the beginning of March, it was wet enough to start a few small streams flowing. At first I did not see as many trillium and other seasonal plants as I hoped to see, but then I noticed a couple of things. First, some plants seem like they may be on a slightly delayed schedule this year. Second, as I continued to walk and look more carefully I was able to find quite a few of these trillium flowers.

A bit of advice if you try to photograph trillium plants and flowers… The blooms seem to come and go rather quickly, so don’t delay if you are looking to photograph them or you’ll find only the triple leaf plants and no flowers. The floor of the redwood forest is a “busy” place, with lots of different plants and the textures of dead and fallen plant material. Photographing flowers against this background takes a bit of care or the flowers will be lost against the complex backdrop. Shooting rather early or late, when little direct sunlight makes it to down through the trees is a good idea – the light in the shadows is softer and less harsh and you can use large apertures to blur the background.

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

Dogwood Leaves, Spring

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Dogwood Leaves, Spring - New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.
New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.

Dogwood Leaves, Spring. Yosemite National Park, California. June 7, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.

There is a grove of dogwood trees along highway 120 into Yosemite, between the park entrance and the valley, where I stop several times each seasons. Most recently I stopped there on a quiet autumn evening this past October when the dogwood leaves were turning fall colors. Much earlier in the season I stop to see and photograph the dogwood flowers. I made this photograph several years ago on my first visit to the grove that season, on a rainy morning when the leaves had emerged and the flowers were in bloom.

While the flowers were the main reason I visited the grove on this morning, it turned out that the flower photographs were less interesting, in some ways, than the photographs I made of the leaves of the dogwood trees and of other newly sprouted plants. Not only where the plants young and fresh and green, but the soft light and the drops of water from the light rain intensified the colors and made the light less harsh.

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: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns

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Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns
Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns. Muir Woods National Monument, California. March 8, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A bed of ferns grows at a trail junction under deep redwood forest cover at Muir Woods National Monument.

This photograph was made in the late winter of 2009, during that time of the year when the redwood forest is still very wet and cool, but when flowers are blooming and spring is clearly on the way. The location is along the very popular (and often quite busy) main trail along the creek through the central part of the park. No doubt I had to wait a bit for the combination of these beams of light and no other visitors on the trail!

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts when this page is viewed on the web. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Eroded Gullies at Zabriskie Point, Morning

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Eroded Gullies at Zabriskie Point, Morning
Eroded Gullies at Zabriskie Point, Morning

Eroded Gullies at Zabriskie Point, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. April 6, 2006. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low angle morning light illuminates a tortured landscape of eroded gullies at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.

I recently “rediscovered” this photograph while undertaking a major review of the past eight years of my raw files. (And, yes, that task is just about as much fun as you might imagine. It would actually be pretty unbearable except that every so often I find some photographs that I had perhaps forgotten or overlooked, and I also come across images that remind me of experiences that took place some time ago.)

This photograph was made, as virtually anyone who has visited the spot recognizes, by pointing my camera about 90 degrees to the left of the classic Zabriskie Point views. Timing was important, as the early light is just skimming across the tops of these tortuously eroded gullies, picking out the ridges between them but leaving the lower sections in shadow. But good fortune also played a role here. Death Valley is usually a clear blue sky kind of place, but on this morning I had clouds! At dawn, if I recall correctly, the clouds actually interfered with the light a bit. But as the sun rose the clouds provided a more dramatic background than plain blue sky and created some softer and diffused light that gave just the right sort of dynamic range for photographs.

On a technical note, if you are viewing this in the right web browser you can mouse over the image and see a summary of basic EXIF data. (Sorry, but this feature only works in web browsers – if you are viewing email, etc. you’ll need to visit the version at my blog to see the EXIF.) If you do check the EXIF you might notice that this photograph was made with a very humble example of photographic technology, the Canon Digital Rebel XT. This camera is a 8MP cropped sensor “consumer” camera that I acquired when I first tested the waters of DSLR photography. (I had actually used digital cameras back in the 1990s, but not for serious photographic work.) Those who wonder which of today’s current DSLRs might enable them to produce interesting and effective images might consider what could be done with such a humble camera. ;-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)