Tag Archives: evening

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Lake, Ridges, Evening Light

September 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mountaintop trees stand above a sub-alpine lake, dome, and ridge in evening light, Yosemite National Park

In early September — before the big fire not far from here — I was among a group of photographers who spent a bit more than a week in the Yosemite back-country chasing late summer subjects in the Range of Light. The rough outline of the adventure was that the group packed in to a remote lake with expansive views, stayed there for about five days, then adjourned to a nearby area at a lower elevation for a few more days before heading back out. The “Meadow Fire” between Clouds Rest and Mount Starr King started late in our trip, but this photograph was made a few days earlier when skies were still beautifully clear.

Days on this kind of trip revolve almost completely around photographic opportunities. By staying on one place for a few days we are able to explore our surroundings more extensively and get a better idea of the prospects for photographs and the best times to make them. A typical day begins very early in the morning, when we arise quietly before sunrise and head out in various directions, goals in mind. After a few hours of photography the light becomes a bit less interesting and we reassemble in camp for breakfast. After that we have a few hours of mostly non-photographic time — for lunch, for camp chores, reading, and even a nap. Dinner comes early, with preparations starting around 3:00, and a few hours before sunset we head out once again. On this evening I chose to climb a nearby ridge of granite slabs and glacial erratics where stubborn trees find a living in cracks in the rock overlooking a nearby lake and one of the main ridges of the Yosemite back-country.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Nevada

Nevada Sky

September 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cloud-filled evening sky above the basin and range country of Nevada

Speeding across northern Nevada on the California Zephyr, bound for Chicago and then New York City, the first day of our trip was coming to an end as evening arrived somewhere between Winnemuca and Elko Nevada. We began the day at the western terminus of the rail line in Emeryville, California, then crossed the Sierra in thunderstorm weather, passed through Reno, and then headed northeast into the basin and range country and the Humboldt Basin. The sky continued to be filled with monsoon clouds — showers were visible in the distance and there were periodic dust clouds raised by the wind.

During most of this traverse between Reno and Winnemuca it was difficult to see how to make a photograph from the train. Shooting through train windows is, to say the least, a challenge — reflections, spots on the windows, and the close by landscape speeding past an image-blurring speeds. But as we got to Winnemuca the light began to change, and what had been low contrast and gray began to acquire the warmer late day colors, and the clouds began to thin enough that there was now a mixture of sky and towering clouds. This is one of several photographs that I made during the last few minutes of decent light.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

N.Y. Chung Chou City, LLC

August 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bright lights of a Manhattan Chinatown shop on a summer evening

After dinner in New York’s Chinatown district, we went out to walk a very roundabout route to the subway. This was approaching my new favorite time for doing street photography — at night! With the newest cameras (I’m using a Fujifilm X-trans mirrorless for city shooting) the high ISO performance is good enough that I can crank it up, put on a f/1.4 lens, and shoot handheld in the urban night, working with only the ambient lighting. It wasn’t quite that dark here, but you can see that it was dark enough that the lighted interior of the shop was brighter than outside.

These scenes seem, to this west coaster, part of the culture and aura of New York City. There is a lot more going on here than might meet the eye, and I won’t even try to explain all of it. The ubiquitous plastic trash bags are an obvious feature. In my native part of the world, most neighborhoods appear to be places where trash doesn’t exist, but in New York everyone seems to just accept it as a part of the urban world. There is the odd matter of the cooler in front of the store entrance, which rests of a shelf and spews a stream of water onto the sidewalk. Between the light and the green awnings, the colors are fairly bright. And, at this early hour of the evening, a pool of light from the shop spills out onto the sidewalk.

Photographs: Nevada

Basin and Range, Monsoon Clouds

August 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening monsoon thunderstorms dissipate above the basin and range terrain of Nevada

This simple photograph necessarily leads to a long story. It starts many, many years ago when I was a child. My family moved to California from Minnesota when I was four years old, and every few years we took a long trip back to the Midwest to visit my mother’s family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. (Although I have not been there for some years now, I still have fond feelings for the place.) Sometimes we drove, with my parents figuring out routes that would take us through national parks and monuments — Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, etc — along the way. Several times we took the train, which in those days was the famous California Zephyr. We would get on the train in Fremont, California and travel all the way to Omaha, Nebraska, arriving very early in the morning and then getting to South Dakota by (usually) rental car or (occasionally) a plane. To a young kid, the California Zephyr was an amazing thing — somehow we got “Pullman” sleeper cars, ate in the dining car, and — if my memory is correct — passed hours in the vista dome car watching the terrain roll by.

Jump forward to the new millennium. Patty’s brother and sister-in-law, and two of our sons and their girlfriends live in Brooklyn, so we find excuses to go to New York City every year or so. This time we went not only to visit family, but also so that Patty could attend the International Double Reed Society conference at NYU. We’ve flown plenty of times, so this time we decided to give the train a try. (We did fly back home at the end of the trip — a good choice in my view.) So on this last day of July we went up to Emeryville, where the Zephyr’s trip starts these days, and embarked on our adventure, nostalgic for me and brand new for Patty. There is much more to say about train travel than I have space for here, but I’ll share just a bit about the first day. The route begins along the shores of the San Francisco Bay and then up the delta to Sacramento, the historic end point of the continental railroad. From there the train crosses the Sierra above Truckee Lake, an absolutely beautiful route that often reveals perspectives on this part of the Sierra that are quite different from what we know from driving Interstate 80. As we crossed the crest, the clouds thickened and we rolled through a hail storm as we descended to Truckee. Not long after that we stopped briefly in Reno, Nevada, and then continued on to the northeast across Nevada. After we passed through Winnemucca (from which I departed some years ago on a grand bike trip across the Black Rock Desert and into Northern California) the train continued on through the Humboldt Basin as evening came on and beautiful light fell on the rangeland and the monsoon clouds overhead as the day came to an end.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: evening

Lake, Ridges, Evening Light

Nevada Sky

N.Y. Chung Chou City, LLC

Basin and Range, Monsoon Clouds

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.