Tag Archives: forest

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

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

November 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The Tuolumne River enters Tuolumne River Canyon below the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp.

This photograph looks west from a rocky point along the Tuolumne River just below Glen Aulin in the Yosemite National Park back-country. In September I spent a total of four nights in this specific area and photographed in and around the granite bowl that rises from the river near the foreground rocks and spreads to the right of the area shown here. The photograph was made very late in the afternoon – it had been raining when I arrived at Glen Aulin but, as often happens in the Sierra, the clouds dissipated later in the day and the skies were starting to clear before sunset.

While my favorite Sierra landscape is at the elevations where the last small trees give way to alpine tundra meadows and the rocky slopes of the highest peaks, there is also something very compelling about these lower (from my point of view) elevation areas, and especially about this particular spot along the Tuolumne. Looking west from this point along the river I had the distinct feeling that I was standing more or less on a boundary between the higher and more alpine zones (exemplified by the Tuolumne Meadows area) and the beginnings of the lower areas in which I feel like I’m heading towards the Central Valley. Here, all of the really tall peaks are behind me (OK, some are to my right…) and before me the land overall drops towards the Valley, the slightly hazy light and air of which is in the far distance in this photograph.

Making this feeling even stronger for me is the fact that very close to Glen Aulin, the Tuolumne abruptly changes from a generally meandering river that descends very gradually for the most part past large meadows and forests to one that drops precipitously into an increasingly narrow and steep canyon surrounded by granite slabs and domes and peaks that begin to take on an appearance that reminds me of Yosemite Valley.

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: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Trunks, Bishop Creek

November 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of closely spaced aspen trunks in an autumn grove in the Bishop Creek, California area.

While the truly wild peak colors of the aspen trees are hard to resist, I also like the trees at other stages. This scene shows one other sort of condition that appeals to me as well. The trees might be described as being “past peak,” since most of the leaves have fallen and the bare trunks and branches are now becoming more visible. However, this opens up the light within the groves and gives a better view of the dense arrangement of trunks and branches, and the smaller number of leaves almost stand out more distinctly than the overwhelming masses of them that are seen a bit earlier in the season.

This photograph was made in mid-October. I had visited this area the previous week, but had been almost a bit disappointed by the color at that time. An early October series of cold winter-like storms had passed over the Sierra, leaving a beautiful coating of snow… but also bringing down many of the colorful leaves and turning others black or brown. But one week later, as if to compensate, up and down the east side of the Sierra the colors suddenly went wild.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trillium Plants, Redwood Forest

November 3, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trillium plants beneath the redwood forest canopy at Muir Woods National Monument.

This is another of the previously overlooked photographs from a few years back, this time from Muir Woods National Monument in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I visit there frequently, and on this occasion I arrived just after the bloom of the trillium flowers had finished, but when the plants were still growing strong.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Dense Aspen Grove, Bishop Creek

October 31, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Soft light filters through the canopy of a dense aspen grove near Bishop Creek, California.

I think that these dense aspen forest scenes ended up being something of a theme for me this fall. In this one I tried to find as dense an example of aspen forest as I could locate and then to make a photograph that may perhaps evoke the combination of diffused light coming down through the depleted canopy of yellow leaves and the very tightly packed trees. The trees in this grove are relatively small and closely packed – so close, in fact, that in places it is very hard to move among them. I used an ultra-wide lens to try to both bring as much of this detail into the frame and to let me work very close to the nearest trees. The closest tree is probably no more than about a foot from the camera.

Working in such close quarters, very small changes in camera position end up having large effects on the composition. In the end I found myself repositioning the camera and tripod by fractions of an inch from side to side. Although it isn’t easy to see in this small jpg version, the complex detail of branches and leaves eventually recedes into the distance near the far edge of the grove and the grove becomes a bit lighter along that farthest fringe.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: forest

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

Trillium Plants, Redwood Forest

Dense Aspen Grove, Bishop Creek

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