Tag Archives: dead

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

Snag, Red Rock

Image July 2, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An old snag stands in front of a fractured red rock cliff.

Let me repeat a slightly embarrassing story that I’ve told before. For many years I did not bother to photograph in the Southwest. There are several facets to the explanation. I was something of a Sierra “bigot” — I loved that landscape so much that I could hardly understand why I would want to look elsewhere. In addition, when I was very young and my family drove between our California home and the Midwestern states where my relatives lived, I thought that our route through Utah was boring.

So it was only in the last decade or so that I finally “discovered” Utah’s beautiful red rock landscapes. My first visit was on a spring trip that took us to Zion, then across the state through Bryce and Capitol Reef (perhaps the most under-appreciated of these parks) and then to Moab where we visited Arches and Canyonlands. Since that time I have returned at other times of the year and pushed my explorations out beyond the boundaries of the parks, but this photograph comes from that first visit.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Two Snags, Morning Light

Image September 18, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two snags stretch toward the sky below an Eastern Sierra Nevada peak in morning light.

This location was a short walk above the Eastern Sierra backcountry base camp where our group spent a week in late August and the very beginning of September. We were camped at about 11,000′ of elevation, where the trees start to give out just below timberline… and where the landscape’s main feature is rock, including granite slabs, glacial moraines, talus fields, and rugged high peaks.

I walked up here early one morning with a plan to photograph a subject just a bit farther away, but I got distracted by beautiful and developing light. I had noted these snags several days earlier and made a plan to return to photograph them in better light. As I arrived the dead trees were still in shadow, but within moments the sun/shadow line reached the trees, and I made this photograph just as the entire height of the trees came into the light.

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Photographs: France, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Door, Paris

Image November 5, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A red door in the Le Marais area of Paris

On this summer’s visit to Paris we stayed along the edge of Le Marais, in an area not far from the Seine, transportation, and the Centre Pompidou. The latter was on our list of places to visit this time, and on this morning we were walking into that area when we passed through this neighborhood of old buildings and narrow streets.

I don’t suppose there is a whole lot to write about (another!) photograph of a colorful door on an old building — after all, it is a bit of a “type.” One thing that did intrigue me about this little scene was the clear attempt to add something approximating nature to this very urban setting… though apparently not with complete success judging from the condition of some of the potted plants.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Shoreline, Fallen Tree, Autumn Aspens

Image October 28, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Beyond a dead tree lying in shoreline grasses, an autumn aspen grove rises up a Sierra Nevada hillside

Trying to find different ways to photograph this well-known subject, here I excluded some of the most characteristic features, included both the near and far shorelines, and placed an old fallen tree in the lower part of the frame. If memory serves, that dead tree has been there for a while, and I may have thought of incorporating it during previous visits. The grassy foreground — with grass growing in the lake — produces its own interesting fall colors as it changes from green to brown.

The grove of brilliantly colored aspens across the lake is, at this point, iconic. Indeed, there are frequently quite a few people photographing here. I arrived at an atypical time of day, and on an afternoon when the clouds may have made the conditions seem unpromising to some. As a result there was hardly anyone else there! The clouds worked to my advantage, as they softened the light coming onto the grove from the left, filling the shadows with a bit more light and avoiding the overly bright highlights that are difficult to deal with in full sun.