Tag Archives: escarpment

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Junipers, Sierra Crest Before Sunrise

Image Leave a comment
Junipers, Sierra Crest Before Sunrise
Soft pre-sunrise light on a pair of junipers and the peaks of the Sierra crest, topped by Mount Humphreys.

Junipers, Sierra Crest Before Sunrise. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft pre-sunrise light on a pair of junipers and the peaks of the Sierra crest, topped by Mount Humphreys.

The Sierra Nevada has many faces, and the east and west sides almost look like two different ranges. The west side is approached via the flat, agricultural Great Central Valley, and it begins with almost imperceptible hills that gradually rise to foothills, then to forested mountains, and many miles later finally culminate in high, rocky peaks and ridges. The personality of the east side is entirely different. You regard it from what is essentially high desert, hot and dry country, and in many place the entire upward thrust of the eastern escarpment is visible at once, rising as much as 10,000 feet from valley to peaks.

I made this photography early on an autumn morning, from a place high on the gigantic hills rising toward the eastern face of the range. In the foreground are a couple of juniper trees, one of the common trees of the dry Southwest terrain. Further above, open and sparse forest dot the rising slopes. Above it all are the high, alpine peaks of the Sierra crest, here topped by the recognizable profile of Mount Humphreys.

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.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

First Light, Eastern Sierra

Image Leave a comment
First Light, Eastern Sierra
Pre-sunrise light on the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada.

First Light, Eastern Sierra. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pre-sunrise light on the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada.

As I queue up photographs for future posts this morning I seem to be alternating, in a way, between the ridiculous and the sublime. The previous image I posted was one of a broken pumpkin, cast aside next to the curb on the morning after Halloween. The photograph shown here comes from a rather different sort of morning, before dawn in a high place just below the eastern face of the Sierra Nevada, awaiting the arriving of sunrise light on an autumn morning.

Photographs (and, arguably, especially landscape photography) is largely about the light. The great subjects are always there, and many of them stand still for hours, days, seasons, years. But the light is never really the same twice, even though we can recognize certain categories of light. One beautiful sort is the softly colored light that may appear just before sunrise when the conditions in the sky are just right to produce some color. I had arrived at this location quite early, having made a prior plan to photograph here, but I could not know exactly what the light would do. Although my plan was to photograph the first sunrise light on the tops of the peaks, it was this soft, early light that turned out to be the most fascinating.

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.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Below Humphreys, Autumn Snow

Image Leave a comment
Below Humphreys, Autumn Snow
Autumn snow dusts the eastern Sierra Nevada escarpment below Mount Humphreys in morning light.

Below Humphreys, Autumn Snow. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn snow dusts the eastern Sierra Nevada escarpment below Mount Humphreys in morning light.

The Sierra Nevada eastern escarpment meets the valleys that run roughly north/south on that side of the range in a variety of ways. In a few places the junction between high desert and Sierra is abrupt. I recall hiking out over one particularly difficult Eastern Sierra pass some years ago, spending the better part of two days walking from a spot just west of the crest to the trailhead, and being able to identify exactly where the rocky range ended. In other places the transition is more complicated or more gradual. In the area where I made this photograph, a huge mass of what must be alluvial and glacial remnants rises gradually for thousands of feet before finally arriving at the base of Sierra peaks.

We drove up here early in the morning, taking a variety of rough gravel roads just about as far as we could reasonably go before stopping to make photographs. Our immediate visual target was a couple of small, isolated aspen groves set in this sagebrush country, but it is hard — OK, impossible — to ignore the massive peaks just over your shoulder!The last of the relatively gentle rise ends in the shadow at the bottom of the frame. From there the slopes quickly steepen and soon rise to rugged and Rocky Mountains which culminate here in some of the highest peaks of the Sierra crest.

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.

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: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Four Trees, Owens Valley And The Sierra

Image Leave a comment
Four Trees, Owens Valley And The Sierra
Four Owens Valley trees in evening light, against the shadowed backdrop of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada.

Four Trees, Owens Valley And The Sierra. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Four Owens Valley trees in evening light, against the shadowed backdrop of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada.

Our recent travels ultimately took us to Utah, but we began with an obligatory visit to the Eastern Sierra Nevada. It doesn’t really seem like autumn until I have renewed my acquaintance with the autumnal transformation of the aspen trees. I had been up there a week earlier, so this was a shorter visit, but it gave us enough time to do a bit of exploring, visiting some spots that we don’t typically visit.

On our final evening before continuing to the east we decided to do a bit of wandering in Owen’s Valley, and our random ride eventually brought us to this spot just as the last sunlight was coming over the Sierra crest and angling across the Valley. We had headed out this direction for an almost entirely unrelated reason, but once there this row of four trees distracted us, and we quickly worked the light before it was gone. (This was one of those landscape-photography-as-action-photography moments — that shadow line was approaching quickly as I made my exposures, and before long the trees were no longer in the sun.) From this vantage point the immensity and abruptness of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra is clear — the wall of peaks, here embellished with a trace of autumn snow, towers above Owens Valley.

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.

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