Tag Archives: forest

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

Tioga Lake, Late Spring

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Tioga Lake, Late Spring
Tioga Lake, Late Spring

Tioga Lake, Late Spring. Near Yosemite National Park, California. June 5, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late spring at icebound Tioga Lake below Tioga Pass with Mammoth Peak and the Kuna Crest beyond in afternoon light.

I made and shared a slightly different photograph of this scene last summer, but when I did my annual end-of-year traverse of the year’s raw files I returned to the original set of images and wondered how I missed this one. In a lot of ways it is similar to the one I selected earlier, though the foreground light and shadow patterns are a bit different and, more importantly, I like the position of the clouds in this one more than what I had in the original. So, there are now two versions of this scene floating around…

After several fairly dry years in California, the winter of 2009-10 produced much more precipitation, as rain in the lowlands and as snowpack in the Sierra. Because of the heavier snow, Tioga Pass opened just a bit later than average, and when it opened there was still a lot of snow in the high country. Since this afforded a rare chance to cross the Yosemite Sierra in conditions not usually seen by drivers I made it a point to get up there as soon as the road opened.

On the drive there was snow along almost the entire length of Tioga Pass Road, and in many places it looked more like winter than like spring. At the same time, it was spring, and the melting of the snowpack was fully underway. While lakes like Tioga Lake, as seen in this photograph, were still ice-covered… the ice was thinning quickly, and everywhere the melting snow was creating creeks and cascades. The high country, especially at the elevation of the road, was filling with water – water in ponds, water in overflowing lakes, water in rivers, water in cascades and waterfalls. I was waterfalls along the road in places where I had not even suspected that there were creeks!

This photograph shows Tioga Lake, just east of and below Tioga Pass, the eastern entrance to Yosemite. The pass itself is in the low saddle just above the meadow ascending the hill at the end of the lake. Beyond, and inside the park, is massive Kuna Crest with white, snow-capped Mammoth Peak in full sun at the right end of the ridge.

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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

Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome

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Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome
Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome

Glacial Erratics and Trees, Lembert Dome. Yosemite National Park, California. June 5, 2010. a© Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Glacial erratics and trees at the base of Lembert Dome, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was made last spring in early June, when I drove over Tioga Pass on a quick one-day jaunt right around the time that the road was re-opened for the season after its annual winter closure. The road opened a bit later than usual in 2010 due to above average and late snow fall, and when I crossed there was as much or more snow than I recall seeing up there.

This was one of my marathon drive days. I started well before dawn in the San Francisco Bay Area and arrived in Yosemite in the very early morning and without any concrete plan – except that the ideas of visiting waterfalls and possibly getting up to Tioga Pass were on my mind. I did stop near the Valley first, where I made a series of photographs of Cascade Creek in virtually full flow. After doing this and making a very brief visit to the Valley, I decided to visit the high country along Tioga Pass road. I went just over the pass before turning back. There was so much snow still around that in most places it still looked much more like winter than like early June.

I finally started heading back to the west, as my plan was to return late to the SF Bay Area. As I left the pass and started down toward Tuolumne Meadows the light began to get “interesting” as the sun dropped lower in the west and some high clouds occasionally softened the light. As I drove past Lembert Dome I thought of photographing these glacial erratics that sit on the apron at the bottom of the dome before making one last stop to photograph snow-covered Tuolumne Meadow in the day’s last light.

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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

Forest and Pond, Winter

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Forest and Pond, Winter
Forest and Pond, Winter

Forest and Pond, Winter. Yosemite Valley, California. January 16, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trees grow out of a small winter melt-water pool in Yosemite Valley, California.

As I drove down the Valley I spotted this very quiet seasonal pool that was reflecting the forms of the forest trees in the soft late-afternoon light. As the temperature dropped there was just the slightest hint of shallow fog starting to form above the surface of the water.

If you are the type who reads the “technical data” accompanying the photos you perhaps notice the unusual choice of lens for this photograph. You might also be surprised at just how often I use a long lens, even this 100-400 zoom, for landscape subjects. Besides getting me “closer” to subjects that would otherwise be out of reach – that was the case here where there was water between me and the trees – the longer lenses also compress the contents of the scene and can also help eliminate elements that would otherwise distract from the main scene.

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
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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

Sunset Avalanche, Half Dome

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Sunset Avalanche, Half Dome
Sunset Avalanche, Half Dome

Sunset Avalanche, Half Dome. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An avalanche breaks loose from the edge of Half Dome as sunset light falls over Yosemite Valley.

Sometimes timing is everything. But, to be honest, luck often plays a bigger part! :-)

On my way out of The Valley on a mid-January weekend, I made this spot my last stop, thinking that I wanted a photograph from this angle at sunset with snow on Half Dome. (I have a number of photographs of this location, but mostly from the warmer months of the year. ) I know this spot well enough at this point that I know pretty much exactly where to be and when to be there, and this was no exception. On the way up here I first stopped to photograph some trees on a ridge across the Valley, something I worked on more than once during this trip. When the last light left those trees I headed on up the road to this overlook and arrived perhaps a full half hour before the start of the real light show. I hung out a bit, ate a snack, and eventually set up.

I never know exactly what will happen here, believe it or not, even though I understand the process pretty well. The foreground right ridge first falls into shadow, then the shadow line begins to creep up toward the face of Half Dome and rise up the rocky slope in front of El Capitan at the left. But what the sky will do during this transition is quite variable. Sometimes the sunset simply dies out with a whimper. On other evenings the light goes through a remarkable sequence of transitions. That is what finally happened on this evening. Eventually I’ll share some of the other photographs from this evening, but for now I’ll just share a hint or two. The color of the sky behind Half Dome transitioned from blue to pink and purple and finally to a deep blue that verged on purple.

But the real surprise – and one I did not realize I had captured it until I got home and looked closely at my raw files – was that one of the images contained a sort of “Yosemite Fall” that I had never seen before, namely the “snow fall” created as a large piece of the snow field near the edge of Half Dome let loose after a day of warm sun and cascaded down the right face of the mountain… just as sunset light split the dome! I suppose this provides yet another opportunity to quote Ansel, who apparently once said, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.”

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
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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.