Tag Archives: grass

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

Autumn Light, Yosemite High Country

September 26, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late season evening light on a trees and a small meadow near Upper Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

After hiking up from Lower Young Lake and arriving at the upper lake well before the good light I wandered off along the southwest shoreline of Upper Young Lake to scope out photographic subjects for the “good light” period that was going to start very soon. First I walked along the shoreline where I found several prospective shots of a rock outcropping with trees at the end of a peninsula that curves into the lake. I kept walking along the shoreline and found a few more interesting formations with the backdrop of the more distant hillside leading to the ridge that runs along the edge of the basin. Eventually I worked my way a bit beyond the lake to a point where small, grassy gullies began to drop toward the steeper terrain leading to the next lake down the valley, and here I found some interesting backlit trees and boulders, again with the hazy image of the more distance hillside beyond.

This photograph was made pointing almost directly toward the lowering sun – it is actually just a bit to the right and behind some rocks and trees that are out of the frame. Because it was so close to the end of the day – and because of the late time of the season – the light soon became very saturated and warm colored. To me this scene says “end of summer” in the high country – while it is still comfortable and the winters snowfall is still weeks in the future, there is a time in September when the days shorter, the grasses turn golden brown, the aspen color is only weeks away, and most of the tourists have left when the changing of the seasons can no longer be denied.

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

Morning, Shoreline of Lower Young Lake

September 25, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Morning sunlight shines through the edge of the forest along the rocky shoreline of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

When I got up on this late-summer morning at Lower Young Lake, my first goal was to walk around the end of the lake and into the forested area shown along the shoreline in this photograph – but as I reached the lake near my camp I decided to first photograph the shoreline forest and trees from a bit further back. There are, as is probably apparent, several layers to this scene: the reflecting surface of the water with logs and other things below the surface and seen through the reflections, the rocks along the shoreline, behind that the edge of the forest interspersed with a few more boulders and bits of sunlit meadow, and far beyond the rocky face of the ridge that rises behind the lake.

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

Upper Young Lake, Peninsula with Trees

September 21, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunset light illuminates trees on a rocky peninsula, reflected in the surface of alpine Upper Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

This is one more and perhaps the last in the sequence of photographs made on a mid-September evening at Upper Young Lake. I mentioned in a previous post that I had walked up here from my campsite to photograph in the beautiful evening light, and after wandering about and making a few other photographs I finally decided to focus my efforts on this scene featuring tree-covered rocks at the end of a small, curving peninsula. I began shooting just as the “golden hour” time began, and continued until the light was quite dim… and I had to start heading back down what passes for a trail to my camp at a lower lake. This photograph was made at a point at which the light had really begun to warm up as the sun dropped toward the horizon, but before the very last (and very red) light.

A comment on why I have posted several photographs (four by now?) of more or less this same scene rather than selecting “the best” one… I’ve previously written about my reasons for posting daily photographs at the blog, which include practice and encouraging me to regularly take photographs all the way through at least an initial post-processing workflow. The latter gives me a better opportunity to get to know the different images, both as I work on them and I I consider them after posting. So, frankly, I don’t necessarily have a clear favorite at this point.

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

Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake

September 19, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Morning light on the shoreline forest at Lower Young Lake.

After finally managing to convince myself to get out of my warm sleeping bag and bivy sack oh-so -early on this cold, late-summer morning, I grabbed my tripod, camera, and lenses and headed down to the shoreline of this lake. (That’s right – no breakfast. My routine is generally to simply get up and start shooting. I might work for as long as a few hours before the light is no longer what I want, at which point I make my way back to my camp to fix coffee and breakfast.) Although I know this lake pretty well at this point, there are always new things to discover when I look closely, and the conditions are never the same twice. Although I’ve walked past this little bit of shoreline forest many times – the trail goes right through here – this is probably the first time I’ve photographed this spot. I’m often intrigued by backlit trees – for the long shadows, the color of light coming through leaves and branches, and the darker and mysterious quality of the trunks – and several other things also caught my attention here. There was still a bit of late-season green in the small plants down close to the ground, and I liked the obstructed view of the lake surface, the far shore, and the rocky slopes above.

This type of scene and lighting poses some challenges, the most obvious being the wide dynamic range. There are very bright specular highlights reflecting from the needles of the trees and the bright areas of the tree trunks can also be very bright. In this scene there was an additional source of “bright” where the rocks above the far shoreline were directly lit by sunlight. The trick is to not blow out all of those highlights – though a bit of “blow out” on tiny specular highlights can be OK – while still retaining some detail on the shaded side of the trees. Often I resort to exposure bracketing (making two or three different exposures to be blended in post) and, in fact, I did approach this scene that way. However, by shooting RAW and working carefully in post I was able to control the highlights and bring back some of the subtle shadow details.

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.

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