Tag Archives: granite

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Shoreline Bench, Reflections

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Shoreline Bench, Reflections
A rocky bench above the reflecting surface of an alpine Sierra Nevada lake

Shoreline Bench, Reflections. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A rocky bench above the reflecting surface of an alpine Sierra Nevada lake.

Since roughly August of 2005 I have been posting a daily new photograph at my website (https://gdanmitchell.com) and on social media, almost always accompanied by a couple of paragraphs of background. Yes, that is 14 years of daily photograph posts at this site! That’s more than 5000 photograph posts as of the date of this on. I’ve done this for several reasons. First, it is a form of daily practice — the importance of which I learned about in my other life in the world of music. Second, I hope that revealing my working process and thinking about photographs may be useful to others trying to make sense of this medium.

This does mean that — obviously! — you’ll see more than one way of seeing a particular subject since I share this editing process here. Today’s photograph — from my recent weeklong shoot in the Eastern Sierra backcountry — is an example of this in at least a couple of ways. First of all, I recently shared another photograph of this same subject that interpreted it in a different way. (That photograph took a closer look at it — this one includes more of the surrounding visual context.) Secondly, if you scroll back to that other version, you may discover that I shared two examples of that one with different crops.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Peaks and Lake Shore

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Peaks and Lake ShorePeaks and Lake Shore
Sierra Nevada peaks tower about a rock-line alpine lake.

Peaks and Lake Shore. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sierra Nevada peaks tower about a rock-line alpine lake.

True confession time — my “photographic core” is and probably always has been black and white photography. Today the majority of my photographs are in color, and I love working whit color images. But I began with black and white, way back when I was just a kid using a cheapie camera on family vacations. Later my father took me into his home darkroom and I learned to make prints, black and white essentially by necessity in those days. My early photographic heroes were almost all black and white photographers.

All of that is by way of explaining the inclusion of this black and white photograph among all of the other color photographs from this trip, a one-week backcountry visit in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. We looked at this scene daily — it was only steps from my tent — and over the week we got to know its details and its moods well. I made this photograph late in the day, as shadows lengthened across the low, rocky saddle, and the more distant peaks lost most of their sunlight.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline*

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Reflections, Rocky Shoreline
Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

* This is the second of two photographs that I’m posting for an unusual reason — after the original post I rethought the aspect ratio of the photograph and decided that I like it in the (unusual for me!) square format. The text below is the same as that used in the original post.

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake.

A group of us recently spent a week camped at 11,000′ in a landscape of water, glaciated rocks, meadows, and high peaks. AS the week went on we gradually pushed out the boundaries of our photographic explorations. My first view of this formation was on my initial scouting trip to this lake — I did not photograph it on that visit, but I made a mental note to return when the light would be more ideal. In this case, “ideal” meant “not in full sun,” so my plan was to come back in the early morning and evening hours. Early morning turned out to be best since the air was still at that hour, leaving the water still enough to produce coherent reflections.

I returned a few mornings later. Demonstrating once again the importance of what I might term “attentive serendipity” in photography, even though I got distracted and arrived at the lake later than planned, the timing turned out to be nearly perfect. I had a few minutes to photograph the larger landscape in the pre-sunlight “quiet light” before moving on to photograph this still-shaded scene. And once I finished here, the sunlight cooperated by arriving at a nearby rocky peninsula and both backlighting a tree and turning the water a lovely deep blue color.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Rocks, Water, Reflection*

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Rocks, Water, Reflection
Granite slabs and submerged rocks at the edge of an alpine Sierra Nevada lake

* This is the first of two photographs that I’m posting for an unusual reason — after the original post I rethought the aspect ratio of the photograph and decided that I like it in the (unusual for me!) square format. The text below is the same as that used in the original post.

Rocks, Water, Reflection. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Granite slabs and submerged rocks at the edge of an alpine Sierra Nevada lake.

One advantage of photographing for a long time in one small area is that you may begin to see things that you initially overlooked. I’m often immediately attracted to the large scale landscape — lakes, peaks, forests, sky — and it takes more time, patience, and attention to start to start to see subtler, smaller subjects. These often constitute what has been called the “intimate landscape,” made up of distinctly non-iconic elements, and frequently offering and almost abstract quality of shape, color, and texture.

To find these things I have to slow down a lot. It is easy to become anxious about finding that Great Photograph that will knock viewers over. But those don’t come every day or even every week. Sometimes, in fact, there are long gaps between them. At one point on this trip one of my fellow photographers mentioned that he had seen me from where he was working, and that I seemed to be doing a lot of “contemplation.” Guilty as charged! In a sense, most of the work of photography may be done without the camera. Sure, the camera is in my bag or attached to my tripod, but I’m looking and considering and thinking more than I’m actually making photographs. This photograph comes from one of those moments — I had simply been walking along the edge of “our” lake, spending a lot of time just looking, when I noticed this pattern of granite and still water than I had walked past quite a few times before.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.