Tag Archives: dense

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dogwood Blossoms, Dark Forest

May 2, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Blossoming dogwoods in dark, dense forest, Yosemite Valley

On one morning during my recent sojourn to photograph spring subjects in Yosemite Valley I had extraordinary lighting and atmospheric conditions. The morning produced a number of photographs that have been and will be shared here. They make me think of “channeling Bierstadt” — with effects of clouds and haze and light combined with dramatic ridges and cliffs. This is not one of those photographs. In fact, this image is inserted here to break up the flow of those others…

The timing and nature of some spring events in Yosemite Valley is variable — the amount of snow in the high country and when it melts out, for example, determine the timing and character of river and waterfall flows. Other events hold to a pretty consistent schedule from year to year, though climate change is edging some of these in new directions. One of the fairly consistent events is the arrival of dogwood blooms in the Valley and then in higher locations nearby. When I visited two weeks ago I saw the first buds on these trees and only a few tiny, green blooms. A week later there were many more blooms, and some trees were nearly full of them. I photographed this forest scene, with a primary tree full of blooms and other more distant blooms seen less vividly in the darker forest, one evening after the direct sun had left this spot.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

November 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

I’ll start with a story about crowds, but I’ll end on a better note. :-) I drove to Yosemite Valley on this late-October weekend partially to photograph early fall color in The Valley, but also so that I could attend an exhibit opening at Gallery Five in Oakhurst — where the final showing to the 2017 Yosemite Renaissance exhibit had been installed. I have visited the Valley for years at about this time, since fall colors there typically peak around the end of the month. On this trip, my first indication that I wouldn’t exactly be alone in the park — despite there being a lot of wildfire smoke — was the extraordinarily long line to enter the park, even very early in the morning. Further into the Valley I was stunned by the number of cars and visitors — it wouldn’t have been anything special during the summer, but near the end of October? I decided to head up to the Curry Village (sorry, “Half Dome Village”) area to park where I could wander off and make photographs, but when I arrived there was literally no place to park — not the Village lot, the overflow lot, the nearby roadways, or anything else all the way up to nearby campgrounds. I was floored…

I finally left that area and found a pull-out along the roadway, parked my car near some a portion of the forest filled with colorful big leaf maple and dogwood trees, and headed off into an area where there was virtually no one else around. Yes, there are such places here, even on busy days. As I walked I spotted a number of potential photographs, but I kept going, walking slowly until I finally reached the banks of the Merced River. I made a few photographs there in solitude before turning around and slowly starting back the way I had come. I now had in mind a few trees that I thought might make interesting photographs, so I paused and poked around near them looking for compositions. This photograph falls into a category that I think of as “order from chaos” compositions, in which there is an almost overwhelming amount of detail tied together (I hope!) by some underlying compositional order. Here the darker branches and trunks of trees supply that order underlying the complexity of the colorful big leaf maple leaves.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Coastal Forest, Point Lobos

July 16, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dense forest atop bluffs above the Pacific Ocean at Point Lobos State Reserve

Point Lobos State Reserve, located just above the Big Sur coastline, is not a large park, but it packs a lot of beauty into a small park. I have visited for decades, beginning long ago when my parents moved the family to California when I was about four years old and we used to take day trips there to picnic and visit the tide pools. (Today’s visitors would be shocked to know that it once was a quiet place not overrun by crowds. Ah, well.) In my teens, when I first became serious about photography, I used to go there and try to channel my inner Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. And, often to my surprise, I still find new surprises almost every time I visit.

On this mid-July visit I arrived in the morning on a weekday shortly after the park opened and before too many other people were there. I was hoping to time my visit for the breaking up of the morning fog, but it stayed foggy the entire time. I parked my car, shouldered a pack full of camera gear, and spent the next few hours wandering slowly and almost aimlessly across the northern half of the park, just looking and enjoying the cool coastal air. Eventually I found myself on familiar ground, walking along the north shore trail. I have passed this spot many times before and may even have photographed this bit of forest, but I had not really noticed these two light-barked trees — one twisted and one straight — surrounded by incredibly dense forest growth.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Dense Brush, Morning Light

March 25, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light falls on dense brush at Pinnacles National Park

Today’s photograph is another from my recent re-introduction to Pinnacles National Park in the mountains to the east of California’s Salinas Valley, following a gap of decades since my last visit. Despite being a place that I regularly visited when I was much younger — back then I rode a bike there to camp, went there to rock climb, hiked the trails and caves — it had somehow slipped off my map of places to visit. For the past few years, since its conversion from National Monument to National Park status, I’ve been planning to finally return.

If your experience with National Parks is mainly with the big, iconic parks such as Yosemite or Yellowstone, this park is going to surprise you with its intimacy. It is a relatively small place, and even its primary visual feature, the High Peaks, doesn’t present a single, focused identifying image in the way that, say, Half Dome or Old Faithful do. It seems more the sort of park that is about subtle and small things and the overall experience of the place — mostly California chaparral terrain that can evoke a sense of near desert at times. I made this photograph earlier in the morning when I paused along a route through a canyon when I came upon dense, back-lit foliage.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: dense

Dogwood Blossoms, Dark Forest

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

Coastal Forest, Point Lobos

Dense Brush, Morning Light

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