Tag Archives: dense

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

Cottonwood Trees and Red Rock Cliffs

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Cottonwood Trees and Red Rock Cliffs
A small grove of tall cottonwood trees beneath a red rock cliff, Zion National Park.

Cottonwood Trees and Red Rock Cliffs. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small grove of tall cottonwood trees beneath a red rock cliff, Zion National Park.

Because Zion National Park is so popular, especially the main Zion Canyon along the Virgin River, the Park Service has instituted a shuttle system to carry visitors in and out and from place to place within the canyon. Like all such systems, it has it flaws — hard to get a seat going into the park early in the morning or late in the day leaving, hard to schlep camera equipment in and out — but on balance I think it is a good thing. I’ve been in Zion when the place was crawling with cars — cars on the roads, cars parked everywhere, cars waiting for parking spaces. The bus system improves on that, and I think the inconvenience is worth it for the most part.

We took a very early shuttle all the way up to the entrance to the narrows, the last stop on the route. My photographer instincts said, “Get there early!” These instincts are good, and there is a lot of interesting work to be done in the soft morning light. But photographing in these canyons isn’t the same as photographing, for example, in the open spaces of the Sierra or the desert. In red rock canyon country, the best light often comes later in the morning and well before sunset, when the sun is high enough to directly strike the red canyon walls and reflect that soft, warm light down into the lower reaches of the canyons. With this in mind, we took our time after photographing below the narrows, and rather than getting back on a shuttle we started walking down canyon, enjoying the variety of reflected light… and we repeated the process once again later in the day. I first saw this group of trees very early in the morning, and I made a point of coming back to them later in the day when I knew the reflected light would appear.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Shades of Autumn

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Shades of Autumn
A scene of dense vegetation with fall color, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Shades of Autumn. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A scene of dense vegetation with fall color, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

On this day I came upon a dense grove of small aspen trees mixed with some autumn-colored mountain willows with their slightly less flamboyant brownish fall color. At the time I arrived the trees were in the shadow of the tall mountains nearby, and the light had a bit of a blue quality. It was also soft and diffused, leading to an absence of very bright highlights and filling the shadows with light, too. The aspen leaves stood out a bit from the background with they yellow color.

Looking for some kind of order and structure in such dense subjects is a challenge, one that forces the photographer to look beyond the obvious ways of seeing. Subtle lines in the dense and complex texture can be enough to direct the eye. Slight contrasts in luminosity or color become important. And the lack of a single strong central subject lets the eye wander about the frame and take in the complexity of the scene.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Forest, White Trunks

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Forest, White Trunks
White trunks in a dense forest of deciduous trees, Redwood National Park.

Forest, White Trunks. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

White trunks in a dense forest of deciduous trees, Redwood National Park.

It turns out that I have yet one more photograph from our early June visit to the far northern reaches of coastal California and the Redwood National and State parks. I am embarrassed to admit how long it was before I finally went up there to photograph, but since my first visit a few years ago I have been back every spring, usually trying to time my trips to coincide with the blooming of the rhododendrons. We were less than successful in that regard this year, but there is much else to see there, too. And because this was back in the early “maybe the pandemic is about over” period, it felt great to travel a bit more freely once again.

When it comes to trees, the redwood forests are obviously the mail attraction up there. But they are not the only attractions, and in many places all sorts of trees and plant life grow abundantly in this relatively wet climate. I stop at this particular forest of densely-spaced trees with light colored trunks on every visit — I like the challenge of looking for compositions that somehow bring some kind of order to the wild density of this vegetation.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Wall of Redwoods

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Wall of Redwoods
A dense grove of closely-spaced coast redwood trees, Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

Wall of Redwoods. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dense grove of closely-spaced coast redwood trees, Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

This dense “wall”of redwood trees is part of a grove at Humboldt Redwoods State Park in Northern California. Our experience of arriving in the grove was quite striking. We had just spent hours driving a long loop of small country roads out to part of the “Lost Coast” area, and after a somewhat steep descent the road dropped into this deep, dark, and quiet grove. We stepped out of the car into the cathedral-like experience of these incredibly large trees and paused here on our drive for some time, wandering slowly among the trees and making photographs.

I’ve written before about how photographing in the redwood forest presents a number of challenges. Some of them are objective — it is very dark here, even in the middle of the day in many cases, and one ends up using very long exposures, sometimes adding up to several seconds. And despite the sense of stillness, it seems that there is always a tiny bit of air movement that affects branches and leaves. But a more complex question is how to render photographs of these places. What the camera records here is quite different than what the eye and the mind see. For some technical reasons I’ve written about previously, while the eye sees rich and deep colors, the camera records something that can appear flatter and dimmer. So the post-processing question always becomes how to move things back toward the light and colors that we remember experiencing. When doing that it is easy to get carried away and perhaps create something that is a bit too much of a fantasy — there’s nothing objectively wrong with that, but the question of how far to go is never far away. I chose here to stick with a rather dark rendition, since I remember that this is how the scene felt to me at the time.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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