Tag Archives: grass

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

Peninsula and Trees, Morning

December 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on a tree-covered peninsula along the edge of a subalpine lake with a talus slope backdrop, Yosemite National Park.

I think that the primary thing that first caught my attention in this little scene was the very twisted and curving tree about 1/3 of the way in from the right edge of the frame. I wonder why one tree ended up growing in such an odd way when its neighbors seem to have managed to grown in a straight and conventional manner? The light on these trees was coming from almost directly behind them, as the sun had just topped the ridge above and out of the frame. Because the talus slope is fairly steep, portions of it remain in shade.

This photograph posed a few interesting challenges, and they are probably not all immediately apparent. One that may be visible to those who are familiar with such scenes is the fact that back-light like this can create some very bright highlights that can “blow out” in a digital camera exposure. In fact, these highlights are what determine the exposure for such a scene. If accommodating the bright highlights makes the shadows too dark, I can either work a bit in post to bring back some shadow detail or I can make a separate exposure for the shadows and blend the two in post. That wasn’t necessary here – I was able to capture the scene in a single exposure. The second odd little problem was that swarms of mosquitos were flying just above the water all around the shoreline of the lake. Although you cannot see them in this small jpg, there were many, many little traces of the bugs in the air – so many, in fact, that I had to somewhat laboriously clone out a good number of the most obvious of them.

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

Rocky Shores, Subalpine Lake

December 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early evening light slants across the rocky shoreline of a sub-alpine back-country lake, Yosemite National Park.

Late in the afternoon on this mid-September day, when the calendar says summer but the surroundings say autumn, we walked cross-country from the lake where we were camped up to the next higher lake in the drainage, following the stream through forest and then sub-alpine meadows to arrive at the outlet of the higher lake in the early evening light. This has been a somewhat unusual year in the Sierra, with late and heavier than normal snowfall, and cool temperatures that maintained the snowpack late into the season, and there were still patches of snow all the way down to the lake’s rocky shoreline. (For scale, if you look really close near the lower right “corner” of the large snow field, you might be able to make out a small spot that is one of my fellow photographers. Hi, Mike!)

I worked this little shoreline clump of rocks to death – I started here shortly after we arrived, and I continued to shoot in more or less this spot until the light faded to the point that we had to start our return hike in order to get back to camp before it was completely dark. This specific spot had a lot to offer, not all of which is visible in this photograph. Along the near shore at my feet there was a little bit of shoreline meadow with grasses, heather, and a few blooming plants and interrupted by these light-colored granite rocks and slabs set at odd angles. Beyond was the water of the lake, transparent and shallow enough that some underwater rocks were visible, and also reflecting the snow, talus fields, and ridges on the far side. I especially like the quality of light at this subtle interval between the “normal” daytime light and the very warm-colored light that comes a bit later. Here the light begins to soften a bit and the color warms slightly, but not so much that the colors are obvious.

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

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

December 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Photographers Charles Cramer and Karl Kroeber working in golden hour light along the shore of a sub-alpine lake high in the Sierra Nevada back-country of Yosemite National Park.

Look! A photograph of people! :-)

I spent a week or so on the trail in the Yosemite back-country with a group of five other photographers this past September. We spent a good stretch of time in the area of some scenic lakes in the northeastern portion of the park. I was out for a week and a day, while the rest of the group spent a few additional days on the trail. Not too long after arriving at the nearby sub-alpine lake that was to be our home for several days, various members of the group started to explore the surrounding area, and on this evening we all decided to climb up the valley from “our” lake to the next higher lake along the drainage. We travelled more or less cross-country up the shallow valley of the creek between the two lakes, passing through beautiful meadows before arriving along the shore of this lake very late in the afternoon.

Once we arrived we more or less split up and focused on different portions of the lake and its surroundings. I mostly shot in one very small area where some beautiful granite boulders were embedded in the shoreline meadow, providing an interesting foreground for photographs across the lake to a nearby peak as the golden hour light arrived. At one point I noticed that my friends Charlie Cramer and Karl Kroeber were shooting nearby, so I paused from my landscape photography to pivot my camera in their direction and make a photograph of them as they worked the golden hour light.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Red Wing Blackbird, Fence Post

December 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A redwing blackbird pauses atop a fence post in front of central California oak/grassland, Calero County Park.

Photographed on the same morning as another recent shot of this same type of bird, the bright red upper wings of this redwind blackbird provide a striking contrast to its jet black body. This bird was on a fence surrounding an old manmade pond at the Calero County Park south of San Jose, California – a place that I can drive to in little more than 15 minutes, and where I have hiked extensively for a number of years. These birds often flock around this small lake on winter and early spring mornings. Here it was still overcast, though the low fog from earlier in the morning was now dispersing.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: grass

Peninsula and Trees, Morning

Rocky Shores, Subalpine Lake

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

Red Wing Blackbird, Fence Post

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