Tag Archives: fog

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

Trees and Cliff, Morning Light, Ahwahnee Meadow

November 24, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun light illuminates autumn trees at Ahwahnee Meadow and dissolves the last remnants of morning ground fog, Yosemite Valley.

This was just about the very last exposure I made in this series. As I wrote earlier, I had started shooting in Ahwahnee Meadow before sunrise, on a very cold morning (frost on the grass!) when ground fog obscured the trees. I continued to photograph here for perhaps an hour and a half as the sun light began to touch the highest cliffs and peaks and slight breezes began to move the ground fog. Finally the light began to make its way down to the valley floor, hitting the trees along the west edge of the meadow. At this point I figured it wouldn’t be long before the trees that I was shooting would be touched by the first bit of light. This photograph was made at just about that moment when, fortuitously, some thin clouds moved overhead and muted the fist light to strike the yellow leaves of this grove of trees, standing above the very last remnants of the ground fog.

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.

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

Glacier Point and Ground Fog in Ahwahnee Meadow, Autumn

November 19, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

Thin morning ground fog floats above the dry autumn grasses of Ahwahnee Meadow below the granite cliffs of Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley.

During the cooler and wetter months of the year, ground fog often forms in the meadows of Yosemite Valley. Ahwahnee Meadow is one of the places I like to photograph these conditions, and since this was the morning after a damp and rainy day, I arrived here very early in anticipation of conditions that might produce the fog. It was very cold when I arrived, certainly below freezing by at least a few degrees. At first the fog was much denser and a bit deeper. I have photographs from this earlier pre-dawn period when a herd of deer passed through the meadow. Eventually, as the sun rose high enough that the light beams began to clear the mountains to the east of the Valley, the first light began to strike the upper slopes and walls of Glacier Point. As this happened and the air began to move and the temperature stopped dropping, the fog began to thin. This photograph was made shortly before the fog actually dissipated completely, and thin streamers of mist are broken up by clearer areas.

I have to admit that I do not know what the foreground plant is. (Hint: I won’t mind even a tiny bit if someone wants to write and tell me! :-) Cottony tufts are found at the top of long stems, growing out of odd shaped pods. I shot this with a very wide angle lens so that I could include some of this foreground foliage and the fill width of Glacier Point.

On a technical note, this image incorporates a blend of two exposures. Portions of the sky at the left side of the frame were very bright, while much of the rest of the scene was in shade and a lot darker. Almost the entire frame is from the 1/15 second exposure, but I have manually blended in a bit of the 1/40 second exposure in the area of cloudy sky at upper left in order to retain a bit of detail there. Also, though it should be obvious, this was shot with an ultra-wide angle lens – a 17mm focal length on a full frame DSLR. If you are at all familiar with this location in the Valley you will recognize that this is a bit of an unusual view.

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.

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

Fog-Shrouded Trees and Ridges, Yosemite Valley

November 18, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

As an autumn storm begins to clear, fog and mist swirls among trees and ridges along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

After a few days of gaudy fall color, I am returning briefly to non-gaudy fall black and white! This is another – and perhaps the last for a while – in the series of misty and cloudy photographs from my visit to Yosemite in late October as a fall storm was passing over the Valley. I was happy when I saw that my planned visit would coincide with a storm, since I love shooting the Valley in the fall in cloudy and wet conditions. As much as I enjoy the beautiful and wam late-summer days, I find the “bad” weather a lot more interesting photographically. The Valley did not disappoint during this visit – I had light rain, clouds ringing the valley, fog both on the Valley floor and among the ridges and trees along the rim, and even some cloud-filtered sunlight.

The subject of this photograph could be any of what seems like an infinite number of scenes of cliffs and ridges and trees along the upper walls of the Valley. The specific spot isn’t important, though it was just to the west of Glacier Point. At times the clouds almost completely obscured the cliff and trees, but as they moved across the face they would periodically clear enough to make bits of the scene momentarily visible. This was another of those situations in which the landscape was emphatically not static – instead it was in a constant state of flux, and it required close and constant attention to catch the photographable moments.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley

November 10, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Evening fog drifts among forest trees on the floor of Yosemite Valley.

One more “misty Yosemite Valley” photograph – though perhaps not quite the final one just yet. This is similar to a photograph I posted earlier – another black and white image of evening fog floating among the trees of Yosemite Valley as seen from Wawona Tunnel View. The traditional and iconic scene from Tunnel View is impressive even in bland conditions, but photographing “that view” in such conditions is not a promising activity. But that wasn’t my plan. Noting that it had just rained for a day and was beginning to clear, I was pretty confident that this evening fog would form and begin to drift over and through the forest. My plan was to be at Tunnel View not to photograph El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Half Dome – which didn’t cooperate in the end anyway – but to point a very long lens downward toward the mist.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: fog

Trees and Cliff, Morning Light, Ahwahnee Meadow

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Glacier Point and Ground Fog in Ahwahnee Meadow, Autumn

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Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.