Tag Archives: face

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspens and Cliff Face

November 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two aspen trees with a few remaining autumn leaves grow against a cliff near North Lake, California.

I photographed this little scene on my first real morning of aspen photography this season in early October. I arrived quite early at North Lake, driving up the snowed in gravel road right after it had apparently been reopened. It was unplowed but other vehicles had clearly been up there, I have four-wheel drive, and I wanted to see what I would find before too many others arrived later in the day. There were few people there when I arrived, which was a bit unusual since this area is often crawling with photographers, individually and in workshops, at this time of the year. But the fact that the road was still snow-covered and that the storms had affected the aspens seemed to keep people away.

I parked before arriving at the lake, shouldered my gear, and walked up to the lake. I bypassed the popular spot near the outlet stream – been there, done that! – and keep walking along the road that skirts the right side of the lake. Everything was still frozen and it was very cold – and I regretted not bringing my winter boots along! The aspen photography was not quite what I had hoped, but there were other subjects, among them the fresh snow – an unusual sight for early October!

In looking for subjects other than the “regular” views of North Lake – which can be spectacular and well worth photographing, too – I often walk slowly along the lake-side road and keep my eyes open along the rocky cliffs that line it. Because the direct sunlight doesn’t hit this spot until later in the day, it is often possible to find softer morning light and even some light reflected from across the lake. On this morning I found that many of the aspen leaves had fallen or turned brown as a result of the storm, but a few were left and the stark white trunks of the trees against the rocks seemed like an interesting subject.

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

Forest And Cliffs, Evening

September 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees, lit by evening light, ascend granite cliffs in the Yosemite National Park back-country.

From September 14 through September 21 I spent eight days on the trail in the back-country of Yosemite National Park, starting and ending at Tuolumne Meadows, taking time to photograph some of the areas I passed through. I was fortunate to be able to join up with a group of five outstanding Yosemite photographers on all but the last day – they were to remain in the high country for several more days after I left.

On the second evening of the trip I walked to a nearby rocky area to photograph, well, rocks – granite slabs, actually, that are marked by reddish deposits and broken up by trees struggling to grow in cracks and small pockets of soil in the rock. I also wanted to photograph a nearby section of the Tuolumne River as it descended through some steep areas of granite as it entered a narrower section of canyon. I started working perhaps an hour and a half or so before sunset, and as actual sunset approached I looked up from these subjects to see the light from the lowering sun beginning to backlight trees high on a cliff above my position and to angle across the edges of the cliffs themselves. I switched gears – and lenses – and began to work on finding compositions in this rocky terrain, seen through a bit of haze and lit by increasingly warm light.

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

Granite Domes and Trees, Morning

August 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Morning light on trees and glaciated ridges, Yosemite National Park.

It is now 11:23 p.m. PDT on Friday, August 12… and I just realized a few moments ago that I neglected to schedule the posting of a new photograph today! Before I left for Yosemite on this past Wednesday I thought I had placed a photograph in the queue for automatic posting today, but apparently not. As long as I complete this post in the next half hour or so, I won’t miss posting my daily photograph!

I made this photograph early today (Friday, August 12) as the first light was striking the glaciated ridges near Olmsted Point. I had arrived early enough to climb far up on the granite slopes above the famous overlook before the sun came up – I had a plan to photograph some of the solitary trees high on these granite slabs as the first light struck them. I accomplished that, and as I began to descend from this area I decided to make a few more photographs while I was up there. Across the nearby canyon is another ridge that is topped by the glacial erratics, the solitary boulders sitting on top of the rounded ridges and just about anywhere else in this part of Yosemite. The early light was coming across from the left and striking the tops of these ridges, but it had not yet struck the huge face of Clouds Rest, seen behind them.

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

Trees and Granite, Morning

August 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Morning light shines on the trees clinging to massive granite domes in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

I’ll write a bit less about this photograph since I posted it already in a color rendition and described some of the background of the image in that earlier post. The basic idea is that I used a very long focal length to isolate the single primary tree against a world of granite that recedes toward the rising sun that is above and out of the frame to the right.

When I made the photograph I had a pretty good idea that it might work as black and white. In fact, though I don’t recall for certain, I think I was leaning towards thinking of the scene in black and white when I made the exposure. (Those last two sentences must seem strange if not almost perverse to people whose primary background is in film!) Sometimes, as with this scene, I end up liking both versions, at least at first. While I may end up leaning toward one or the other more after I live with the prints a while, right now I go back and forth. Of course, when two things are different it is not necessarily the case that one must be better than the other; sometimes they are just different.

Oddly, one thing that inclined me towards black and white ends up also suggesting color. Because so much of the content of the frame is nearly monochromatic I think I originally felt that with so little color to work with that it might make sense to just let it be monochromatic. But then, “with so little color to work with,” the subtle effect of color begins, in some ways, to be even more important.

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