Tag Archives: golden

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

Autumn Cottonwood Trees, Meadow, Fog

November 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog drifts through a stand of cottonwood trees with golden autumn leaves, Yosemite Valley

Like essentially everyone who has photographed much in Yosemite Valley, I know this little stand of cottonwood trees very well. It is an obvious attractive photographic subject since its densely grouped trees stand apart from other trees in the middle of a meadow, its “perfect cottonwood-ness” is broken by the presence of a couple of other trees almost hidden within the stand, there are a variety of potential backgrounds for the small grove, at the right times it can be beautifully lit, and the meadow often forms beautiful ground fog early in the morning during certain seasons and conditions. Since the fall color of the trees seemed near its peak, I made a plan to be out there at one of the potentially ideal times on Halloween morning.

On the prior day I had decided on the spot from which I would photograph, with the idea being to make a fairly tightly cropped photograph of the trees with a bit of canyon wall in the background. With this plan in mind, I woke up in the darkness and arrived here well before sunrise and went directly to the spot I had picked out. I was very happy to find ground fog drifting over the meadow and frost on its dried grasses. I started photographing almost right away, before there was any direct light here or anywhere else in the Valley, and I planned to shoot right through sunrise and the point when the first direct light strikes the meadow and this group of trees. Before long, the first bit of sunlight came to the upper edge of the trees, and the light changed quickly as the beam of light from up near Half Dome moved down across the trees and began to cast alternating light and shadow across the meadow. This image from the series of photographs seems like the best combination of fog (which began to dissipate as the sun arrived), sunlight on trees and meadow, and background still in shade.

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

Autumn Afternoon, Merced River Cottonwood Trees

November 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy autumn afternoon light on golden cottonwood trees growing along the banks of the Merced River, Yosemite Valley

As I try to do every fall, I visited Yosemite Valley for a few days right at the end of October so that I could photograph fall color and other seasonal subjects. I typically target my visits for near the end of the last week of the month, since at about this time the cottonwood, big leaf maple, black oak, and dogwood trees can produce beautiful colors and the meadows turn wonderful shades of tan and brown and gold. There are other benefits to visiting at this time of year, too – far fewer people, cooler temperatures, availability of campsites, and I often run into friends and other interesting people in the Valley.

I’m a big fan of backlit trees, and I have shot in this area of meadows and cottonwood trees and river bank many times before. In the afternoon the light begins to come into the valley from the low sun in the west and while trees can be backlit, some of the granite cliffs are already in shadow. If there is a bit of atmospheric haze, I like it even more! On this afternoon I decided to poke around along the banks of the Merced in this area where it flows through a series of bends among meadows and forest – and there were backlit cottonwood trees galore to work with!

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

Cottonwood Leaves, Autumn

November 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Leaves, wet from morning frost, litter the ground near the banks of the Merced River

During my recent visit to Yosemite Valley to photograph autumn subjects, I kept seeing a particular stand of very small cottonwood trees growing densely close together near the Merced River. They were in a spot with somewhat tricky lighting, and the first few times I saw them the light was not ideal, so I filed the subject away mentally and figured I would come back and shoot them in the right light. Eventually, I returned, and although the light was still not ideal for the photograph I had in mind – and did not make yet on this trip – I decided to walk out to the trees and take a look and perhaps make a few close-up photographs.

None of the trees are taller than perhaps fifteen feet and some are only a couple of feet tall, but they grow together densely. (My hunch is that in some future decade when they mature only a few of them will survive.) I began by photographing groups of their vertical trunks from outside the grove, looking for interesting relationships among the forms of their trunks and for a few spots where a solitary leaf was still stuck in the branches of a tree. Then I walked into the grove, looking at the trees themselves and at the ground below, which was some combination of dew-soaked and flattened grass mixed with the leave that had fallen from the trees.

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

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

October 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dry summer grasses in Dana Meadow near Tioga Pass, forest leading to Kuna Crest

I think of this photograph as being, in some ways, very unremarkable. In a few other ways there are some things that are at least a bit unusual about it, though this probably isn’t obvious. The scene is one that is familiar to anyone who has driven over Tioga Pass between the eastern Sierra and Yosemite National Park and west side destinations. The Yosemite Sierra along this route is a very diverse place, but the large sub-alpine meadows surrounded by forest and higher peaks is very common and characteristic of the area. Sierra visitors are also probably familiar with the annual seasonal transition from lush, green meadows to drier, brown meadows.

So what is a bit unusual about this scene? For one thing, I shot it during more or less the midday hours. This is not typically when I photograph scenes like this one, but this daytime view is probably the sort of thing that we see most often when we are actually there in the range. The color of the meadow grass is also a bit unusual – not that this coloration occurs, but that it happened so early in the season this year. The almost complete absence of green in the meadow is more characteristic of a time several weeks later than this early August date, when typically we might see a combination of dry and lush. But this year has been anything but a typical one in the Sierra and in much of California. Last winter was extremely dry, and there was barely any precipitation after the new year started – and this was the second drought year in a row. The conditions in the Sierra, as seen here, are not unprecedented, but they are very unusual.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: golden

Autumn Cottonwood Trees, Meadow, Fog

Autumn Afternoon, Merced River Cottonwood Trees

Cottonwood Leaves, Autumn

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

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