Tag Archives: golden

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

Aspen Grove, Dunderberg Road

December 15, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense grove of thick and twisy aspens growing along Dunderberg Road in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

This just may be my final new aspen photograph from the 2010 season in the eastern Sierra. (Then again, I do go through all of my raw files during the final couple of weeks of the year, and who knows what might turn up!)

The photograph was made late in the day along the dirt track of Dunderberg Road in a grove of trees that I have visited in the past. Aspen trees can assume a seemingly infinite variety of forms, ranging from the groves of tall and slender trees growing in near perfect symmetry to stunted and twisted specimens that seem more like shrubs than trees. In this grove the trees seem to have endured some real stress – they have thick and strong trunks, but the trees are not tall and the trunks are gnarled and twisted in all sorts of crazy directions. Often when you see a trunk as thick as this one you would expect the tree to be quite tall… but not here.

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Color, North Lake

November 15, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Colorful autumn aspen colors surround the shores of North Lake with the Sierra Crest beyond.

I should probably hand out sunglasses and an Official Icon Alert warning with this one. Yes, it is that North Lake.

Later on this morning, after shooting elsewhere around the lake in the early hours, and after the workshop shooters had mostly moved on (after all, the good light was gone… ;-), I decided to cross the outlet stream and see about climbing up a hill above that lake that I had been thinking about. I found an easy trail along the side of the lake, but then had to more or less bushwhack my way up the slope to get above the tops of the very red lakeside aspens, which is no easy task when carrying a large photo pack and a good size tripod. (Once up there, I discovered a very easy trail going straight to my position. Sigh.)

Although it was no longer the “golden hour” and the morning was well along, there were scattered clouds. These shadows from these clouds moved rapidly across the landscape, sometimes producing almost uniform shade and sometimes lighting up some features while leaving others less visible. When I see conditions like this I often imagine the perfect positioning of the clouds and the light effects they produce – some primary feature caught in the spot light of a beam of sun, others in sunlight muted by thin clouds, and any spots that happen to be a bit too bright and distracting miraculously muted by a perfectly placed shadow. Yeah, right. But if I watch and wait long enough, something interesting almost always happens, and sometimes the moving clouds do momentarily solve composition and exposure problems. Here, the light on the bright red trees in the foreground is momentarily diminished by a passing cloud shadow and the shoreline trees are in sunlight… and the big cloud at upper left is reflecting on the surface of the water just beyond the foreground trees.

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Sunrise, Piute Crags

November 13, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Autumn morning light on Piute Crags, reflected in the shoreline waters of a Sierra Nevada lake.

I made a lot of photographs during the past few months, traveling to the Sierra and a number of other places frequently. I often go through the photographs from the most recent shoot and post images soon after, but when I’m on to the next adventure fairly quickly I don’t always have time to get to everything in one batch before I shoot the next one. Inevitably, some images get “left behind.” Things have slowed down just a bit, and now I’m finding time to go back through some of that earlier work and pull out a few more images that I like. This is one of them.

Folks who photograph in the eastern Sierra will likely recognize this location. The long, rugged ridge of Piute Crags is striking, especially in the morning light, more so in the fall when the aspens change color, and double-especially on such a fall morning when clouds are moving in and out of the scene. I’m not going to say much more about the location beyond telling a little story. As I made this photograph there were perhaps 50 photographers set up more or less tripod-to-tripod a ways away shooting the same general subject from the place where almost everyone shoots. Their location is, indeed, a beautiful spot and I’ve shot there myself. (Heck, I shot there later on this same trip, though at a time of day when the workshops had gone elsewhere.) But there is more than one way to photograph a scene, and with a bit of thought and some wandering around it is usually possible to find a perspective that isn’t quite the same as the familiar one.

(If you know where I stood, please resist the temptation to say too much. This precise spot could not withstand the stress of dozens of photographers. Thanks!)

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

Trees in Morning Light, Ahwahnee Meadow, Autumn

November 12, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Trees in Morning Light, Ahwahnee Meadow, Autumn

Morning light on trees in and around Ahwahnee Meadow, Yosemite Valley.

This little grove of trees might be one of the best known groves in Yosemite Valley. It sits apart from other trees out in Ahwahnee Meadow, and it can be an appealing site at various times of the year – in spring when the new leaves are bright green, in winter when the meadow and the trees may be snow-covered, and in fall. I made this photograph at the very end of October when the leaves had begun to change to fall colors and the meadow grasses had gone dormant. I had arrived here very early – before sun rise – and shot for a good hour or more in ground fog conditions. As the morning wore on the layer of fog thinned and finally disappeared completely just before I made this photograph. At about the same time, higher clouds around the rim of the Valley that had blocked the earlier light began to thin and the stronger light hit the meadow and the trees.

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

Tag Archives: golden

Aspen Grove, Dunderberg Road

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Aspen Color, North Lake

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Trees in Morning Light, Ahwahnee Meadow, Autumn

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