Tree-Covered Ridge, Mist. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mist from an autumn storm obscures trees growing on a steep ridge near the rim of Yosemite Valley.

Since I’ve written about this series of photographs of cloud- and fog-shouded subjects in Yosemite Valley several times during the past week, I’ll keep the background short on this one. I used a long lens to isolate small scenes in which the clouds of an autumn storm alternately hid and (sometimes barely) revealed trees, cliffs, and rocky spires along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

In a few of the photographs I was thinking about how close I could get to having very little or almost no detail in the photograph and still make it work. Here the only real detail is in the diagonal of trees and rocks that is mostly obscured by the clouds, with only a few bits of tree being a bit darker. What I’m thinking of is more along the lines of suggesting the presence of the bit of cliff and trees than actually trying to show it explicitly.

This is, for me at least, a tricky thing! The temptation is to boost contrast in post to get more definition from the tree shapes, but that quickly leads to something that has a very different mood than that of the actual scene – and which can easily look phony. I think I’m heading in a direction I like here, but I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I have a chance to try a print in a week or so.

(By the way, if your monitor is even a little bit “off,” you may see some colorations in this monochrome image that aren’t really there. Sorry! :-)

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.

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