Tag Archives: desert

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

Aspens, High Desert Valley

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Aspens, High Desert Valley
Autumn aspen trees line a creek through a high desert canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Aspens, High Desert Valley. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Autumn aspen trees line a creek through a high desert canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Heading across the Sierra early in the third week of October, I wasn’t certain what kind of aspen color I would encounter. There’s always some color at this point in the season, but in many years it has been diminished by wind and passing early weather fronts. But it seemed that these influences were muted this year, and as I approached Sonora Pass I was encouraged by seeing much more color than I expected. I turned south after crossing the pass I headed south where the forests of the Eastern Sierra begins to meet the high desert sage country. As I passed this small valley — where I had not really paid attention to the color potential in the past — I caught a flash of bright color below. I quickly turned around and backtracked to locate a better camera position.

Getting just the right conditions for these trees that grow along shallow canyons like this one is tricky, especially on the eastern slopes of the Sierra. Typical daytime light is often quite harsh, though that diminishes a bit with autumn’s lowering sun angles. But this time I got lucky, and broken clouds created patterns of light and shadow on the sage-covered hills. I set up and waited for the light to show up in the right places, and eventually it lit up the trees in the Vally and produced alternating light and dark patterns in the hills and mountains beyond.

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: Sierra Nevada

Clearing Storm, Sierra Crest

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Clearing Storm, Sierra Crest
A late-spring storm clears along the Sierra Nevada crest near Bloody Canyon.

Clearing Storm, Sierra Crest. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A late-spring storm clears along the Sierra Nevada crest near Bloody Canyon.

This photograph comes from an early-season trip across the Sierra crest a few years ago. It must have been quite a day. The first photographs from the set were in springtime Yosemite Valley. By the end of the day I had crossed Tioga Pass and headed out to the east of the range and into high desert near Mono Lake, the location from which I made this photograph late in the afternoon.

If only I kept a diary of these things! My hunch is that this was my “first trip of the season” across recently-cleared passes, on which I often take stock of the conditions at the beginning of a new summer season. From the looks of the clouds hugging the crest along the eastern Yosemite boundary, winter had not yet quite let go. There was still a decent amount of snow, clouds draped the crest, and it looks like there is some active precipitation.

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 | Twitter | 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.

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

Ridges and Shadows

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Ridges and Shadows
Morning light creates stark contrasts between ridges and shadows on Death Valley badlands landscape.

Ridges and Shadows. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Morning light creates stark contrasts between ridges and shadows on Death Valley badlands landscape.

Believe it or not, I’m still not quite done with this year’s Death Valley photographs. I’ve been sitting on this one for a week or two, pondering several things about it, but now I think I’m done with it. It may be the final one from this year’s very productive visits to the park. We’ll see! (Looking ahead, there’s a good chance that a year from now I’ll review the files and find at least one more.)

This is perhaps the place to again mention the typical cycle I go through when I return with photographs from a location. I open up the collection, and a few typically jump out at me immediately. These will not necessarily be “the best” of the group, but they are photographs that are fairly straightforward to process and work more or less as I expected when I exposed them. Then I go back through the files and begin to work on likely prospects that will require more thought. (Often the best work comes from this pass.) But this isn’t the end of it, and next I look again, this time trying to see the work with a different perspective. Here I often “discover” how to “see” photographs that did not initially seem like they would work. Finally (or maybe not?) I make one more serious traverse of the work to see what I might have missed. And with that — at least until I come back to the files in a year or so — it is on to new projects!

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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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