Tag Archives: granite

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

Subalpine Lake, Morning Reflections

February 4, 2016 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light and reflections on the rocky shoreline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

A wonderful thing about making photographs is that I get to travel backwards and forwards in time almost at will. Here it is in the middle of winter, and by looking back a few months in my archive I can go right back to a beautiful late summer week spent photographing around a Yosemite subalpine lake with a couple of friends. All of the sensory memories come right back: the stillness of the morning lake as the first sun worked its way through high clouds and haze, the memory of carrying my camera around the perimeter of that lake every morning as I looked slowly of subjects, the first colors of Sierra autumn.

We camped here for a full week, working intensively to photograph in and around one small area. If you haven’t done this you could be forgiven for wondering how in the world one could spend an entire week in area not much larger than a mile or two across. In fact, I still have those doubts at the start of any trip like this. All I can say is that, inevitably, the end of such a week comes too soon, I depart with many things left unphotographed, and I often return to these places again and find even more to see and photograph.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Granite Slabs, Forest, Evening Light

December 13, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light breaks through clouds to light trees growing on granite slabs along the Tuolumne River

This photograph takes me back to mid-summer days in the high county when I spent a big chunk of time in the Tuolumne Meadows area making photographs in July. It was an odd year — July seemed almost normal, despite the historic drought, except that it looks more like a normal August, with virtually all snow gone, low water in the creeks, and fairly settled weather.

One evening a group of us joined forces to wander along the Tuolumne River in evening light. Here we stopped at a curve where the river curves around a section lined with large granite slabs. It was cloudy, but a bit of late-day light slanted in from the left.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Seepage Stains

December 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Water seepage stains mark a wall of Cathedral Range granite, Yosemite National Park

During a week-long stay at a backcountry Yosemite lake my partners and I had plenty of time to explore our surroundings. A day in such a place is a joy, but we had a string of such days, with conditions ranging from Sierra blue sky, through wildfire smoke, to an early seasons autumn storm that dropped rain on us for a couple of days.

Being in one location for so long provides the opportunity to really get to know the place. After a day or so getting to know the main, iconic features, continuing exploration beings to reveal things that we miss at first. Across the valley from our camp was a long and low rock wall, at the base of steeply sloping granite walls and holding somewhat level basin. Not surprisingly, the evidence of water flowing over this wall was obvious, from the lush plant life to the beautiful water stain patterns.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Seepage Stains, Cathedral Range Granite

November 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Water seepage stains the surface of a Cathedral Range granite face, Yosemite National Park

During our week camped at a Yosemite back-country lake in September we had plenty of time to become intimately aware of the surrounding landscape, to explore its features, and to return to some of them more than once. One photographer who wasn’t with us this time but who has been a fixture on these trips in the past (Hi, Mike!) and shared some general information about a particular feature that intrigued him — and as a result the rest of us also became intrigued by it. The description of the location was a bit vague, but not so vague that a person who knows the area well would be unable to find it. (Think of directions like, “Near some granite to the south of a lake and west of another lake.”) So, once on the scene, this area was one that caught our focus.

Up from where we were camped, through some trees, and near the base of an incline, there is an odd section of cliff. In the sort of spot where you might expect everything to have been ground away by ancient glaciers there is a section of cliff that is hundreds of feet long and perhaps no ore than thirty feet high. A basin lies above it, and it seems that water finds many places to seem over and through these rocks, staining them in all sorts of diverse and amazing ways. This photograph is one of several close up studies I did of small sections of this face, where solid, blocky granite is cut through by cracks and water stains are everywhere.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: granite

Subalpine Lake, Morning Reflections

Granite Slabs, Forest, Evening Light

Seepage Stains

Seepage Stains, Cathedral Range Granite

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