“Lick Observatory” — Lick Observatory, on the summit of Mount Hamilton.
This could be a very long post, but I’ll try to keep it short. The Lick Observatory, constructed in the 1800s, sits on the highest peak within sight of my home — both the home I grew up in and the one I live it now. When I was young, one of the greatest adventures was a trip up there, especially when it snowed on the 4000’+ summit of Mount Hamilton. Years later, when I was an avid cyclist, I used to ride up to the summit at least once per month, and today I still know the road like the proverbial back of my hand.
I ended up there by accident on this late mid-December afternoon. My day started before dawn out in the Central Valley, where I had gone to photograph migratory birds. For various reasons (including the absence of geese from wildlife area where I ended up) I left the Valley earlier than usual and decided to take the longest and most isolated back-road back to the San Francisco Bay Area — and that is the 75 mile narrow road between Patterson and San Jose. The high point — quite literally — of this drive is the summit of Mount Hamilton, so I stopped there briefly to make a quick visit inside, take in the tremendous panorama of the south San Francisco Bay, and make a few photographs, including this shot of the historic observatory building.!– wp:separator –>
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A group of small trees find a marginal existence growing along a crack at the edge of an exfoliated slab of granite, Yosemite National Park
It took me three tries, on successive days, to finally get the photograph of this little bit of granite slab and trees that I was looking for. On evening of our first day camping in the vicinity we were under the thick smoke plume from the early September “Meadow” fire in Yosemite, which was burning some miles away in the Little Yosemite Valley area — but also sending dense smoke towards us and dropping ash from the sky. I did make a few photographs in this eerie light the first night, but it was a very tricky situation that did not work well for this subject. I went back on the second evening, when the smoke had diminished at our location to the point that it wasn’t a major factor in “intimate landscape” photographs like this one. I went to the top of a large granite bowl before the light was good and scouted for likely photographs to make as the evening light improved. I spotted this lengthy crack at the edge of an exfoliated granite slab, in which a number of small trees had taken tenuous root and decided that it could be an interesting subject with evening sidelight. I wasn’t the only one, however, and three members of our party had the same idea! We are a cooperative bunch, so I photographed some other things while my partners worked this spot, and then returned to set up a shot that looked more directly up the length of the crack that curves through the composition in this version. Later that evening I was quickly reviewing my shots from the day, and I realized that one of my buddies had cast a long shadow into part of the frame! Ah, well, such things happen.
So I made plans to go back yet again on our final evening in the area and try once more. In the end, I’m glad that I did. I’m now convinced that by going back I found a more interesting composition that accomplished several things. First, no one’s shadow is in the image! Second, I think that positioning the large crack so that it curves more diagonally through the frame works better than my original composition. Third, due to this different camera position and somewhat different light, I was able to let the shadow of the tree create a sort of mirror image of its form, resulting in a relationship between the tree and the shadow that I like. There are spots much like this one all over the place in Yosemite — smooth slabs of granite on which tiny but often mature trees manage to find just enough sustenance. In this little spot, a somewhat unusual number of these trees seem to have made a success of it.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Smoke from the 2014 Meadow fire colors late afternoon light on a tree and granite canyon in the Yosemite backcountry.
After a number of days spent photographing at a higher elevation location, our group descended into one of the great river canyons of the Yosemite backcountry, where we made camp for the final days of our 10-day photographic trip. This change gave us the opportunity to shoot a number of subjects that were quite different from those that we concentrated on at the earlier location, and it also let us revisit some locations and subjects that we had all photographed in the past. While some might wonder at the notion of revisiting a place when so many new places remain unexplored, there is something special about returning to a place and learning its patterns more deeply.
On this afternoon I ascended a nearby granite ridge, from which there is a wonderful view down this river canyon as it descends toward California’s Central Valley. As is typical at this time of year in the Sierra — though a bit more prevalent than usual in this drought year — the haze, smell, and coloration of wildfire smoke was in the air. In this photograph, the smoke and the late hour produced an unusual coloration in this scene as I shot through the trunk and branches of a large tree on the ridge.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Sunset light on glacial erratics, domes, and the Cathedral Range
The first time I ascended this system of granite slabs to its high point was in the morning, and my goal was to shoot the opposite direction from the scene shown here, so that I could capture the backlight on trees ascending from the ridge toward a higher valley to the east. While up here it became apparent that this spot had potential beyond just that of trees in morning light, and I made several more visits during out stay here.
On this evening I thought I would find out what late-day light possibilities might exist. My initial idea was to arrive soon enough to shoot down the slabs into an open forest of lodgepole pines that seemed like it might catch evening backlight in interesting ways. I arrived at a spot from which I thought such a shot was possible, but it seemed a bit too early for ideal light, and I continued on up the granite rib to a higher point. The atmosphere and light were a bit tricky. At this time of year it is very common to see a bit of wildfire smoke in the air, and that was the case on this evening. In addition, there were some high clouds far to the west and seemed likely to mute the last light. In fact, just as I initially set up this shot the light quickly faded, as if someone had turned down the dimmer switch on a lighting system! At first I was disappointed, but when I looked to the west to see the clouds that blocked the light I could see that there was a gap below the clouds through which the sun would likely shine once more before sunset. So I waited. Perhaps five or ten minutes later the light began to change silently (somehow it always seems a bit odd that only the light changes at those moments) and I managed to shoot through the transition from dark to full light and make one exposure when the light had come back on both the near features and the distant ridge.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
