Tag Archives: flow

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

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

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Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek
“Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek” — Runoff from spring snow melt rushes over boulders of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.

I recently posted the black and white version of this photograph of Cascade Creek in full spring flow.

The color version of this photograph posed a series of post-processing questions and problems that others who have worked with a scene like this one can probably imagine. The creek descends through a narrow, rocky gorge at this point and I photographed it early in the morning before any direct sunlight was able to reach the water. Benefits of shooting at this time included the softer light, which tends to both throw some light into the shadows and to soften the brightest highlights. This also permits a longer exposure which allows the water to blur a bit and express the wild motion of the creek. However, since the primary source of light was the open sky, the camera “sees” a very blue scene. (Our visual system compensates for this, so it doesn’t look as blue as it really is when you are on the scene.)

There are several ways to deal with the color balance issues that this situation creates. You could just “go with the blue,” and I’ve seen photographs done that way. I’ve even seen some in which the photograph amped up the saturation and ended up with something very blue. In general, that’s not my thing! I’m most often looking for something that seems “believable” – it may not be objectively accurate, but I intend it to be “subjectively accurate.” With this in mind, my first instinct was simply to warm the color balance in order to move away from the blue cast and toward a warmer one.

My immediate impression was that this was an improvement, and I worked with this interpretation for several days – but something about it didn’t sit quite right with me. (This is perhaps one reason that I also worked with the black and white rendition in the meantime.) Eventually I did some comparisons between the “warmed up” version and the original… and neither seemed like what I was after. The overly blue original looked garish but the overly warm version seemed artificial. I tried some other approaches and finally discovered that because the blue was so intense that I could simply desaturate it – more than you might think – and keep the “colder” coloration without letting it overwhelm the image.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM at 126mm (at B&H)
ISO 100, f/16, 1/8 second

 

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

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

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Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek
Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek. Yosemite National Park, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Runoff from spring snow melt rushes over boulders of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.

This is a subject that I return to several times each year – a particular section of creek that can be viewed from overhead and which can vary from nearly dry to a wild torrent depending upon the time of year and the character of each new year. During the past year I was inspired by Charles Cramer’s stunning photograph of this subject to look at it more closely and from some different perspectives. (A small bit of “Charlie’s scene” appears in this photograph. I wonder if you can find it? :-)

In some ways, the view of this scene is limited in that you can only see it from a particular range of positions – unless you have the skill of levitation! In another way it is hardly limiting at all since the larger view contains many possible smaller views of rocks and plants and water and light. I still have in mind a horizontal composition in this general area, but so far it hasn’t quite worked. Guess I’ll have to keep trying.

I made this photograph in the morning before any direct light had worked its way around the mountains and down into the stream bed. Beyond the stream, which drops precipitously into the Merced River far below, there was open sky and that is the light that reflects on some of the wet rocks. By playing around to find an appropriate combination of ISO values, aperture, and shutter speed, I tried to get the water to hold some detail but to also be blurred enough to reflect its wild motion as it tumbles down this rocky canyon.

As is sometimes the case, I still cannot decide for sure between this monochrome version and a color version that will appear here before long.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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

Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

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Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek
Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek. Yosemite National Park, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A torrent of water from melting spring snow rushed through a rocky section of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.

During the early part of the seasonal spring snowmelt runoff, Cascade Creek is transformed into a wild and raging torrent as the lower elevation snow in the upper portion of its drainage begins to melt quickly. Contributing to the spectacular effect is the very steep path the creek follows down the walls of the Merced Canyon before it makes one final leap over a waterfall and then joins with the main Merced River.

This bit of creek is another of those places in the Sierra that I have come to know very well. There are certain places where I like to say that I know individual rocks and trees, and this is one of them. I photograph here several times each year during all seasons and in all kinds of light. But my favorite is the early morning spring light, before the sun rises high enough to directly illuminate the creek bed, when the creek is flowing madly and twisting and turning around and over boulders.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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

Rushing Water and Granite Slab, Sierra Nevada

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Rushing Water and Granite Slab, Sierra Nevada
Rushing Water and Granite Slab, Sierra Nevada

Rushing Water and Granite Slab, Sierra Nevada. Yosemite National Park, California. June 28, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Sierra Nevada creek, swollen from spring runoff, flows across granite slabs – Yosemite National Park.

The image and sound of spring runoff water rushing over granite slabs are common in the high Sierra. Though the scene is almost a generic one, for me it also brings to mind many very specific places and experiences throughout the range. (Some of my backpacking friends might think of a spot along Tyndall Creek on the John Muir Trail where we have camped more than once.)

The exact location of this little bit of cascading and rushing water is probably not very important – you are never far from a little scene like this if you are near almost any little creek high in the Sierra! Here the water flows mostly across very smooth rock – so smooth that you can see right through the rushing water to the rocks in many places. In this precise spot there is a weakness in the rock and a small ledge has formed, and the result is a bit of white water.

I’ll share a few technical observations about this photograph, too. First, there isn’t a sharp thing in the image! While sharp focus can be important, I don’t think it is here. (Though if you look closely, the patterns of the blurred, fast-moving water are sharp in a fuzzy sort of way. ;-) The rocks beneath the water cannot be sharp because they are blurred by the water; the water cannot be sharp since I intentionally chose a shutter speed that allowed motion blur. Second, I have to admit that I did not originally have a black and white photograph in mind when I made this exposure. I worked on it for a while in color and though I liked the motion of the water I just wasn’t happy with the coloration of the scene. I finally realized that this image wasn’t about the “reality” of the rocks and water but about creating an impression of the rushing water – and that perhaps monochrome might work. Third, this is yet another “landscape” photograph made with a lens that the “common wisdom” (which often turns out to be not so wise) would say is not a landscape lens – a 70-200mm zoom.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.