Tag Archives: fall

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

Burn Zone, Near Foresta

November 4, 2009 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Trees, stumps, and boulders in a recently burned area near Foresta, Yosemite National Park, California.

The story behind this photograph is a sad one, and one that provokes a certain amount of anger. The small village of Foresta is just on the western boundary of Yosemite National Park, above El Portal and below the road into Yosemite Valley from the highway 120 northern park entrance. A number of years ago – seems like perhaps 15 or so, though I haven’t looked it up – a tremendous fire started near Foresta and burned quickly and very destructively through a mature forest that had gone too long without burning. Because of the build-up of litter on the forest floor, the fire burned unusually hot and not only consumed small trees and low-lying plants but also destroyed a complete mature forest between Foresta and Tioga Pass Road where it finally was stopped.

This was one of the fires that probably made clear the terrible risks forests were facing due to many years of fire suppression – these forests evolved in a world of periodic fires and smaller fires to clear out the undergrowth the inevitable big fire has so much fuel to feed upon that the damage to the forest is ultimately much worse. For this reason, Yosemite (along with other parks) has adopted a wise policy of letting natural fires burn out on their own. Personnel are dispatched to keep an eye on the fire and to ensure that it doesn’t get out of control or threaten people or structures, but otherwise the fires are allowed to burn naturally. The price of some additional late summer smoke is, I think, a small price to pay for a more healthy forest.

After that original fire, what had previously been a forest along this section of the road instead became an open area. At first many small plants and wildflowers took advantage of the sunlight and grew like crazy. Eventually larger trees began to grow and in the past few years it was almost possible to imagine that a forest like the original one might eventually return.

One day in August this past summer I was camped in the Ten Lake Basin to do photography. On the second to last day I decided to leave my base camp and instead plan a dry camp on top of a ridge above the Basin from which I had seen a tremendous panorama of the Sierra crest on my way in. I packed up, carrying extra water, and climbed the steep trail to the pass. But as I climbed I smelled smoke, and as I came to the summit I saw a plume of forest fire smoke to the west… in the direction of Foresta. I gave up on the photography and hiked on out. I eventually found out that NPS personnel had been conducting a “management fire” near Foresta (on a very hot and dry summer day!) when it got out of control. This “little fire” burned right out of the Foresta area and into the surrounding hills and valleys, eventually consuming thousands of acres… including a good portion of the area of the previous fire that had slowly been starting to recover.

The tragedies of this fire are several. First, it is troubling that those in charge of actions designed to lessen fire damage to the forest miscalculated so badly that they ended up destroying substantial areas of the forest they were to protect. Even worse, the recovery of this area has now been set back by years, and perhaps decades.

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

Edge of the Light – Yosemite Valley

November 3, 2009 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Late afternoon autumn light falls across a grove of trees on the Merced River with the cliffs of Yosemite Fall beyond.

On the weekend of October 31 and November 1 I made my annual “Yosemite Valley Fall Color” trip to The Valley – to photograph autumn subjects including the maple, dogwood, oak, and cottonwood trees. While some say that these trees may not provide the same kind of color found in New England, they still draw me back to the Valley every autumn.

This photograph was made in one of the busiest and most popular tourist viewpoints in the Valley, in Leidig Meadow near the chapel. On a busy high season day, perhaps hundred of people will briefly park their cars here, get out, point their cameras up, and make (another) photograph of Yosemite Falls. In some ways this sounds like just about that last place that I would want to photograph, but I’ve come to like the late afternoon light in this meadow, especially in the autumn as the grasses turn brown, the cottonwood trees along the Merced start to lose their leaves, and the low angle of the sun creates interesting back-lighting and shadows.

I’d like to say that I planned to capture exactly this lighting, with the edge of the sun/shadow line falling just across this band of trees and picking up the small tree to the left of the larger group, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration. In truth, I did plan to shoot the trees against the shadowed background, but I was thinking more about having the background cliffs in shadow than I was about the trees right behind the cottonwoods. So I was shooting something else when I happened to look up and see that these trees were just barely catching the last light and that the small tree on the left was set off from the others – so I quickly set up this composition and managed to make a few exposures before the light quickly faded from the trees.

Like so many lighting effects in landscape photography this was a fleeting moment. Far from being a sedate and relaxed process, capturing “edge” light like this is often a matter of being in the right place, getting exactly the right moment, and often requires not only good fortune but close attention to ones surroundings and very quick work!

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

McGee Creek Pack Station, Autumn Snow Storm

October 28, 2009 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Snow flurries from an early autumn storm mask the high peaks above the McGee Creek Pack Station in the eastern Sierra Nevada, California.

When I’m driving back from the Bishop area I often make a few odd stops at special little places along highway 395 at which I think I might find something special, and the McGee Creek Canyon is one of these places. The canyon is just a short drive above the north-south highway, and in the right conditions it can provide really wonderful scenes – the aspens that grow along the road to the canyon, the views back into and across the valley to peaks beyond, intimate scenes of high desert rocks and vegetation, and from the road end up the steep-sided canyon toward the alpine headwalls of the canyon.

On this early October 2009 day I was returning from shooting near Bishop Creek in light snow and thought I might get some interesting views of aspen color (which didn’t really happen) and the view up McGee Canyon, so I turned off of 395 and headed on up. From previous visits I knew of this specific view from along the gravel road right above the pack station, so I already had it in mind as I arrived. When I saw the cloud-shrouded peaks at the end of the canyon and the foreground light I quickly stopped and set up. The cloud shadows were moving quickly and, unfortunately, heading my direction so I had to work very quickly – and I had just enough time to make this one exposure with the light on the area around the pack station before the light was gone.

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

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Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Snow and Morning Light on Wheeler Ridge

October 27, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on the Buttermilks and the face of the eastern Sierra’s Wheeler Ridge as an early autumn storm brings snow flurries.

On both mornings during my early October trip to the Bishop Creek area to photograph aspens, I instead ended up spending at least some time shooting the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada in the area of the “Buttermilks,” an area of very interesting rock formations (and lots of rock climbers!) off of highway 168 above Bishop. On the first morning I drove a good distance up into the region and spent an hour or more shooting a particular scene. On the second morning, when this photograph was made, I only stopped briefly on my up to higher elevation areas, aspen groves, and snow flurries.

An early season storm was coming in – it had been tremendously windy the night before and I’d picked up a dusting of snow at my campsite the night before. While the sun streamed over the White Mountains to the east and managed to light up the high desert hills in this area it was snowing lightly but steadily up in the mountains. Here the light is sweeping across the low, rocky hills in the foreground and hitting the steep lower slopes of Wheeler ridge, while above the peaks are shrouded in mist and clouds and receiving a light but steady snow fall.

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

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