Tag Archives: field

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

Flooded Meadow Near Greenstone Lake

August 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Late-season snow fields are reflected in the pond of a flooded alpine meadow near Greenstone Lake, Sierra Nevada.

During this year of heavy and late winter snowfall, there is still a surprising amount of snow in the Sierra Nevada high country. In the upper portion of this image you can see large snow fields (with much larger ones higher on the slope and out of the frame) at that base of this talus slope at around 10,000+ feet of elevation. During a more typical year, there would still be a few scattered snow fields, but nothing like we see this year. And because there is still so much snow, the plants that would normally be well-developed by now are still just emerging, and the creeks and ponds are overflowing, the meadows are flooded… and the mosquitos are having a field day!

This little pond among the boulder-filled meadows near Greenstone Lake at the far end of Saddlebag Lake was still overflowing with snowmelt water that reflected the extensive snow fields still on the talus field beyond. To get to this spot – in mid-August! – I had to cross a number of still frozen snow fields, follow trails that were flooded in places, and pick my way carefully across waterlogged meadows. It is going to be a short summer season in the high Sierra, but as a compensatory bonus we may still see wildflowers all the way into September.

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

Eastern Sierra Nevada Near June Lake

August 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees ascend sage-covered hills toward the Sierra Nevada crest near June Lake, California.

Near highway 395 in Mono County, the main north-south route east of the Sierra crest, these open stands of large conifers ascend from the high desert sagebrush country towards the peaks of the Sierra crest, which rise much more abruptly on this side of the range than on the gentle west side. The tall ridge is above the June Lakes resort area between Mammoth Lakes and Lee Vining.

While my primary goal on this trip was to photograph in the Yosemite high country along Tioga Pass Road, smoke from a wildfire near Glacier Point in the park was drifting over the Tuolumne area and creating a lot of very non-photogenic haze. I had a hunch that by dropped over to the east side of the range I might be able to get away from the smoke or at least find areas where it wasn’t so thick. The smoke was still affecting the light near Lee Vining, but I didn’t have to drive too far south to get out of its path, though even here there is a bit of haze increasing the effect of atmospheric recession.

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

Sunset and Moonrise, Kuna Crest

August 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The nearly- full moon rises above the sunset light on Kuna Crest, Yosemite National Park.

Kuna Crest runs up Lyell Canyon between the Lyell and Dana forks of the Tuolumne River with the Sierra crest at one end and Mammoth Peak at the other. (Mammoth Peak is the large peak straight in front of you as you top Tioga Pass entering Yosemite National Park.) This ridge can catch great sunset light during the summer, and as I came down from the pass, heading back toward my camp at Porcupine Flat, and saw the almost full moon appearing over the shoulder of the ridge I decided to quickly stop and make a few exposures as the last light was about to leave the forest and soon after the peaks.

If you have tried photographing a scene that includes the moon in the early evening you know that the exposure is a tricky thing. The moon is lit by daylight, so it isn’t too surprising that the “correct” exposure for the moon is close to a normal daytime exposure. But that is not the right exposure for the rest of the scene, which turns out to be quite a bit darker than daylight at this time of day. In this scene things were even more complicates as the very saturated red colors on the ridge were quite “hot,” while the foreground meadow and forest was in shade and both darker and cooler in color. Basically, the dynamic range between the moon and the foreground was too large for a single exposure… so I made several.

At the time of exposure I thought that I might need as many as three component images in the final photograph – they would be one exposed for the bright ridge and sky, one exposed for the rather dark and shadowed foreground, and possibly a third that correctly exposed the moon. To be on the safe side I bracketed four exposures. When I began to work on the image I figured out that in this case I could construct a final “believable” image from two exposures if I was careful and could make some additional adjustments during post.

This is an example of a shot in which the use of a graduated neutral density filter could have been problematic, but where exposure blending could work very well. (“Exposure blending” is one term for the process of manually combining two component exposures using masked layers in Photoshop. No, it is not the same thing as HDR photography.) One of the things that would have been quite tricking using graduated neutral density filters is that the division between the brighter upper half and the darker lower half is not linear. Instead, the roughly follows the curved boundary between the lower meadow and dark trees and the still sunlit trees and the peak and sky.

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

Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning

August 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Two juniper trees in morning light at the base of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park.

This strong and straight juniper and the smaller twin hiding behind it grow at the top of the rocky debris field at the base of this dome not far from Tenaya Lake in the Yosemite National Park high country. A bit later than the “golden hour” time, the morning light begins to spill around the side of the dome and illuminate these trees from behind, creating a glow in their branches and the branches of trees and brush around them.

Last night someone asked me if I choose when to go to the Sierra to photograph based on the weather conditions. I wish I had that luxury! To some extent I make general decisions about where and what to shoot based on the season – The Valley around the end the start of November, the east side in early October, etc. – but for the most part I go where I can go when I can go there. However, I do alter the focus of my shooting based on the current conditions. This late-July trip is a good example.

I associate certain types of light with different seasons, and I tend to look for clear and crisp light in late July along, accented by snow fields and lots of new growth. I was a bit surprised by the amount of haze in the atmosphere. In fact, in some ways it almost reminded me of very late summer and early fall when Sierra wildfires often create a smokey haze over the range. With this in mind, I figured out that crystal clear photographs of mountain peaks against sky were not going to be in the cards. Instead I focused more on closer subjects, and when I shot more distant subjects I thought a lot about how to use the haze, embracing its effect rather than regretting that I had to deal with it. This photograph is perhaps an example of both of those approaches. The main subject here, the central pair of trees, cannot be more than a couple hundred feet away, if that. Behind the trees and the slab are more distant granite domes and cliffs and forest winding up the mountainside. Shooting almost straight into the sun accentuated the hazy quality of the more distant elements of the scene and enhanced the sense of front to back distance, and separated the foreground trees from the background it a way that would not have been possible in “better” lighting conditions.

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