Tag Archives: golden

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

Morning Light, Redwoods

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Morning Light, Redwoods
Morning Light, Redwoods

Morning Light, Redwoods. Muir Woods National Monument, California. August 1, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Light beams shine between redwood trees, Muir Woods National Monument

During essentially the entire month of July, in what is typically my prime time for being in the Sierra and other wild places doing landscape photography, we were instead traveling in the UK, Germany, and Austria. It was a great trip – and I’d do it again in a heartbeat! – but I’ve missed my natural world here in California, and it was about time to return to it. So I marked the first day of August by getting up well before the crack of dawn and heading north across the Golden Gate to spend a morning in the cool and quiet of redwood groves. (To those who have been to Muir Woods when it is, as is too often the case, overrun by tourists from San Francisco, I’ll just say that if you go very and on the right day, you can briefly have the place almost to yourself.)

I was the first or perhaps second person to arrive at Muir Woods, well before the gates were open and the kiosks manned, so I loaded up the camera gear and ambled slowly into the park, taking in the cool air, the quiet, and the soft early morning light. I had to particular photographs in mind, so I just took the time to go slowly and look around. In the end, I came back with perhaps four that I like – which is a pretty good haul! – and the others might be just a bit less iconic than this one. I made this photograph at just about the time I had decided that my work for the morning was done – the sun was getting high in the sky and creating the hard-to-photograph “pizza light” and more visitors were starting to show up. As I turned around to start back I saw this small grove above on the hillside, with some light beams passing through the branches, so I switched lenses and made this photograph.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Eroded Desert Canyon Walls

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Eroded Desert Canyon Walls
Eroded Desert Canyon Walls

Eroded Desert Canyon Walls. Death Valley National Park, California. April 5, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The eroded rock strata of the walls of a narrow desert canyon, Death Valley National Park

I made this photograph in a place that I most certainly would not want to visit on the day that I am posting this! Back in early April this popular hike up a narrow canyon was relatively comfortable on a day when the temperature might have made it to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. By now, that would be considered to be a “cool” day, since temperatures in these “warm” months frequently go well over 100 degrees. Some people choose to visit Death Valley in those awful conditions, but I’ll take the late fall through early spring season any time!

In Death Valley, more so than in just about any other area below timberline, the geology of the place is laid open for us to see clearly. Things do grow there, but sparsely and rarely beyond a height that might be measured in inches. The primary impression is of rock – monumental mountains of rock, vast washes over which floods have spread broken up rock and gravel, and the valley floors which may range from gravel to sand – but are still, ultimately, rock. Very little grows in this canyon aside from a few tiny plants peeking out of the odd crack or cowering in bits of shade, so here the erosion features and the underlying rock strata are easy to see. As I came to this point in the canyon, the wall was mostly still in shadows filled by reflected light, with just a bit of direct sunlight rimming the edges of some of the rocks.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Golden Desert-Snapdragon

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Golden Desert-Snapdragon
Golden Desert-Snapdragon

Golden Desert-Snapdragon. Death Valley National Park, California. March 27, 2010. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Golden Desert-Snapdragon plant emerges from rocky terrain, Death Valley National Park

This is another photograph from a Death Valley trip I made back in 2010, “rediscovered” while going through old raw files near the end of 2012. The photograph was made along the roadside near a popular, even iconic, Death Valley location early one morning, during a spring that followed a much wetter than usual winter. During my visit I managed to catch the beginning of the impressive blooming of wildflowers that almost invariably follows such weather, as the desert plants take full advantage of the moisture and do everything in their power to reproduce. During the course of my visit, which lasted less than a week, I watch bare hillsides transition into flower-covered hillsides, and it seemed that some new plant was growing in almost every place that a plant might grow.

This plant is, obviously, quite small. You might have overlooked it and some of the nearby plants if you did not slow down and look a bit more closely. I only noticed the new plants after stopping on the other side of the road and looking around a bit. Once I did so, I saw a lot of wildflower color in this otherwise barren and rock place. This is on the verge of being a “belly flower” – one so small and so close to the ground that you must get down on your belly to photograph it!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | 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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Leaves, First Light

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Aspen Leaves, First Light
Aspen Leaves, First Light

Aspen Leaves, First Light. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 3, 2012. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First morning light on aspen trees and fall foliage, eastern Sierra Nevada, California

This past fall I had exactly one day to photograph aspens in the eastern Sierra Nevada. This was a bit odd for me, since I usually spend quite a number of days chasing fall aspen color up and down the east side of the range. But this year my target was a bit further away in Utah, and we merely paused for an extra day on the “east side” on our way to that other state. Fortunately, we hit great conditions, in terms of good aspen color and fine weather that didn’t prevent us from getting up to those trees.

Very early in the morning we headed up to an area that I have photographed many times. There are a couple of iconic photographic subjects at this location, but I mostly got them out of my system some years ago and now I look for somewhat less obvious subjects when I go here. I began by shooting some trees near the outlet stream of a lake, with early morning light behind the trees. After working that tricky but beautiful light for a while, I decided to go around to the far side of the lake to where a large stand of small but densely packed aspens stands at the base of a hillside. I got there before the sun came to this spot, so I quickly schlepped my gear up the hill a ways and into the end of the grove, setting up just before the sun arrived. Before the sun’s rays hit the tree, everything had a distinctly blue tone. As the edge of the shadow arrived, the aspen leaves began to glow more and to cast shadows on the trees in the background. These shadows quickly transitioned from soft and subtle to quite contrasty and sharply defined in a matter of seconds. This photograph was made just as the sunlight arrived but before it became intense, and the soft shadows of the leaves on the slender background trunks lasted just a moment.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | 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.