Tag Archives: evening

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

Fog and Trees, Yosemite Valley

November 29, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Forest trees are almost completely obscured by evening fog in Yosemite Valley.

If you have been watching some of my recently posted photographs, you have perhaps figured out that I’m working on a series of photographs in which mist and fog and clouds obscure to a greater or lesser extent some underlying elements of the landscape. (If you haven’t been watching my recent posts… you can still be my friend! ;-) In a few of them I am seeing how far I can take this and still have an interesting photograph. This one marks a further step along that path in that at least half of the scene has little or no detail, being almost completely obscured by drifting fog, and even in the areas where trees are still visible the details are very muted.

I’m thinking about just how little detail I can retain in the scene and still retain a sense of form. And this isn’t the most extreme in the series at all. I’m working on another one which retains less “solid” detail than this one. (It may be that it works as a print but perhaps not as a web jpg, in which case I may not post it here – we’ll see.)

The photograph was made at – icon alert! – Wawona Tunnel View above Yosemite Valley on an evening when I had little interest in shooting the classic view of the Valley itself, but had instead gone there because I was almost certain that fog would form among the trees on the Valley floor as the temperature dropped following a rainy day. If anyone had noticed me shooting on that evening among the line-up of dozens of photographers, they might have been perplexed as to why I was aiming a very large lens down when the famous view was obviously straight ahead! ;-)

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Oak Trees, Evening, El Capitan Meadow

November 11, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A grove of oak trees in El Capitan Meadow illuminated by late afternoon light.

What Yosemite photographer hasn’t photographed these oaks, especially the four in the foreground? I know I can’t resist, and I’ve photographed them in every season and in conditions ranging from warm afternoons to winter mornings with snow on the ground. Here I photographed them during the last few minutes of direct light, just before the sun dropped behind ridges to the west, and after the light had already left the meadow, the forest and the Valley walls beyond.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley

November 10, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Evening fog drifts among forest trees on the floor of Yosemite Valley.

One more “misty Yosemite Valley” photograph – though perhaps not quite the final one just yet. This is similar to a photograph I posted earlier – another black and white image of evening fog floating among the trees of Yosemite Valley as seen from Wawona Tunnel View. The traditional and iconic scene from Tunnel View is impressive even in bland conditions, but photographing “that view” in such conditions is not a promising activity. But that wasn’t my plan. Noting that it had just rained for a day and was beginning to clear, I was pretty confident that this evening fog would form and begin to drift over and through the forest. My plan was to be at Tunnel View not to photograph El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Half Dome – which didn’t cooperate in the end anyway – but to point a very long lens downward toward the mist.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Forest and Evening Fog

November 4, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Evening fog drifts among forest trees of Yosemite Valley.

Yes, this was shot from Wawona Tunnel View…in the evening… while standing in a line of dozens of other photographers. Sigh. :-)

I’ve written before that I do not automatically go to Tunnel View in the evening. However, if I think something special might happen and I don’t have another subject in mind I will sometimes join the tripod line. (I also sometimes find myself there on odd evenings when almost no one else is there, but that is a different story.) On this late-October day I had been having a great time photographing the misty, cloudy, and sometimes rainy landscape – perhaps among my favorite photography conditions in the Valley. As evening approached, I was pretty certain that the wet conditions and the falling temperatures would cause fog to appear among the trees on the Valley floor close to sunset, and I have some ideas about photographs of trees in this fog that I wanted to try.

So I went to Tunnel View, put a very long lens on my camera, and queued up along the stone wall at the overlook. Because I did not plan to photograph the traditional “valley view” at all, I did not worry too much about where I was in this throng – and I ended up in a spot from which the familiar view was slightly obstructed. But that was OK since I was going to be pointing my lens down. This fog is not an unusual phenomenon, but it is different every time it occurs. Sometimes it builds up high enough to hover around the upper reaches of El Capitan. Sometimes there will just be thin wisps up the center of the Valley. Sometimes it is almost stationary and sometimes it moves quickly. On this evening it started out slowly and somewhat thin, but soon a breeze began blowing the moist air up from the west and a long ribbon of fog developed along the north side of the Valley floor, and I focused my attention along the borders near the edges of the fog.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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