Trees and Granite, Morning Light. Yosemite National Park, California. August 12, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First morning light on trees and granite slabs near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph a year ago, almost exactly, in August of 2011, while on a trip of several days devoted to photographing the High Sierra, mostly in the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite. A year later I do not remember all of the details of this morning, though I recall that I had gone very early to the Olmsted Point area to photograph the glacial erratic boulders and some rugged trees growing on the granite slabs found in the area. Perhaps this was among the first photographs I made, before heading off to shoot my primary subject, since the series it comes from includes the very first light to strike these trees, while its angle was still small enough to hit the trees but not the rock.

When I came upon this photograph in the old raw file archive this week, one thing that struck me is the fact that it does include a Yosemite icon (seen from an iconic angle that is often photographed), yet that icon is almost an afterthought and most certainly not the primary subject of the photograph. I posted something here yesterday about photographing icons (“Photographing Icons or Not”), and one of the ideas that you might take away from that post is that it is possible to see iconic sights in ways that do not necessarily repeat the familiar iconic views. (Not to fear, I have the iconic view of this subject, too.) I’m willing to bet that I was thinking a whole lot more about the warm first light on the foreground trees, the way it contrasted with the cooler blue tones of the deep canyon and shadowed ridges beyond, and the texture and shapes of the foreground granite slabs that are so characteristic of this part of the Sierra.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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