Tag Archives: forest

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

Ragged Peak and Lower Young Lake

Image September 22, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

The summit ridge of Ragged Peak is reflected in the still morning surface of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

On the final morning of my mid-August backpacking/photography trip to the Young Lakes area I awoke to some overcast to the east. Photographically speaking, this was a mostly good thing. As the morning light builds, it can otherwise become harsh, but when just the right thickness of clouds is overhead the light can be diffused a bit and the shadows are lit and the bright granite surface reflections are a bit subdued. In addition to having a bit of thin cloudiness overhead, there was virtually no wind, so the surface of the lake remained glass-like longer on this morning, and showed a clear reflection of Ragged Peak, the dominant feature on this end of the ridge that runs alongside these lakes.

The saddle to the left of Ragged Peak reminds me of a previous late-season to this lake. I thought I was the only person there – it must have been very late September or perhaps even the beginning of October – but in the morning someone showed up as I was sitting by the lake shore. It turned out that he was a “seasonal” – a back-country ranger during the summer months who did something else the rest of the year. We had a long conversation about a variety of things, including his musings about whether it was perhaps time to apply for a “real” job with the park service. Near the end of our conversation he mentioned that he had been over this saddle, so of course I had to try it. I won’t say much more about it, except to point out that it does not really have a trail and it ascends a very steep slope filled with very large boulders before topping the rough edge of an old moraine – in other words, it isn’t quite like taking the trail to Glen Aulin.

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

Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake

September 19, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Morning light on the shoreline forest at Lower Young Lake.

After finally managing to convince myself to get out of my warm sleeping bag and bivy sack oh-so -early on this cold, late-summer morning, I grabbed my tripod, camera, and lenses and headed down to the shoreline of this lake. (That’s right – no breakfast. My routine is generally to simply get up and start shooting. I might work for as long as a few hours before the light is no longer what I want, at which point I make my way back to my camp to fix coffee and breakfast.) Although I know this lake pretty well at this point, there are always new things to discover when I look closely, and the conditions are never the same twice. Although I’ve walked past this little bit of shoreline forest many times – the trail goes right through here – this is probably the first time I’ve photographed this spot. I’m often intrigued by backlit trees – for the long shadows, the color of light coming through leaves and branches, and the darker and mysterious quality of the trunks – and several other things also caught my attention here. There was still a bit of late-season green in the small plants down close to the ground, and I liked the obstructed view of the lake surface, the far shore, and the rocky slopes above.

This type of scene and lighting poses some challenges, the most obvious being the wide dynamic range. There are very bright specular highlights reflecting from the needles of the trees and the bright areas of the tree trunks can also be very bright. In this scene there was an additional source of “bright” where the rocks above the far shoreline were directly lit by sunlight. The trick is to not blow out all of those highlights – though a bit of “blow out” on tiny specular highlights can be OK – while still retaining some detail on the shaded side of the trees. Often I resort to exposure bracketing (making two or three different exposures to be blended in post) and, in fact, I did approach this scene that way. However, by shooting RAW and working carefully in post I was able to control the highlights and bring back some of the subtle shadow details.

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: Cascades, Photographs: Nature

Trees and Boulders, Artist Point

September 6, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ridgetop trees and boulders along the trail catch the afternoon light at Artist Point, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington.

I had been admiring this steep, rugged, and distant ridge all afternoon, starting with our first shooting location down lower on the mountain. As we hiked up the Artist Point trail, we took a detour to the right and I noticed this low rocky ridge covered with trees and the ridge in the distance. At first I couldn’t quite see a shot and I looked elsewhere, but soon I came back to this spot and thought that something with the foreground rocks and trees along with the clouds and more distant ridge might be interesting – but as soon as I saw this a large cloud floated over and blocked the sun from my position, leaving the nearby trees and rocks in shade!

Sometimes when this happens it makes more sense to move on and look for a photograph that works with the conditions you have, but other times it can be worth waiting. It is hard to know for sure which is right, but I decided to set up and sit tight, waiting to see if the light would improve. The light shining around the edge of the cloud was tantalizingly close, but the cloud was stubborn about moving. At one point the light increased a bit for perhaps 15-20 seconds, but then quickly went away. I continued to wait. Finally, the light began to gradually increase, and I got about one minute or less of sun before the cloud again blocked the light – but this was long enough to make a few exposures of this scene.

I have a favor to ask of anyone who is familiar with this area – help in identifying the trees and, even more, help in identifying/naming the distant ridge and the peaks that sit on it. I’m not great at plant identification, but I’m really out of my league in the Cascades. One person walking by as I made the shot seemed to think that the trees are mountain hemlock – but I’d be grateful if anyone can confirm this… or set me straight. Although I was impressed with the peaks on the ridge in the distance in this photograph… I do not have any Washington topographical maps or guide books, so I’m completely in the dark about what to call this ridge or the peaks. Here, too, I would be grateful if anyone can help me identify the ridge, the peaks, and any other important features in the photograph.

Update: A Facebook reader shared information about the peaks on the distant ridge in this photograph…

Alan Majchrowicz writes: “From left to right, Tomyhoi Peak, Canadian and American Border Peaks, Larrabee Mountain. Nice photo Dan, hope I can break away this week and spend some time up there!”

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: Cascades, Photographs: Nature

Sunset, Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake

September 5, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Sunset on cloud-shrouded summit of Mt. Shuksan with Picture Lake in the foreground, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington.

Icon alert! I understand that photographing Mt. Shuksan from this locale is, in the Pacific Northwest context, perhaps almost equivalent to photographing the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands or photographing Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View. As a brand new photographer of Cascades Range subjects, I plead guilty to succumbing to this icon and photographing it. (I’m told that the only thing that this photograph needs in order to qualify for full “yet another photo of an icon” status would be to come back in a month and shoot it when the fall colors appear.)

My brother and I had been up higher photographing the Artist Point area for most of the afternoon, and he suggested that since we were here we might stop at Picture Lake on the way back down the mountain and see what might develop. I’m glad he did since, icon status aside, this really is a stunning and beautiful location and it was a quiet and beautiful evening. Several things made it special, I think. First, while the summit of Shuksan never fully cleared, the clouds shrouding the summit gave it a more dramatic aspect than might have been the case with an unobstructed view. Second, much to our surprise, we were not joined by a throng of other photographers. At first we were the only ones there, and later we only saw a few others in the area.

This was a technically challenging scene to photograph. The lake and foreground trees were in shadow at this point, though on the scene one could still see the details of the forest along and beyond the far shore. Yet the summit of Shuksan and the clouds were in full sun, and making this even more difficult, the red sunset light was extra intense. The eye can take all of this in without a problem as you move your focus from foreground to distant peak, but the camera is not as capable – and the dynamic range of the scene dramatically exceeds the capabilities of cameras. So, again, this photograph is a composite of three exposures manually blended in post to combine the best exposures of bright and saturated highlights with the best exposure of the dark forest along the shore of the lake.

Update on 9/29/10: I recently noticed that I had misidentified the lake in the photograph! I have corrected the post to call it by its correct name, Picture Lake.

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.

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