A grove of oak trees in El Capitan Meadow illuminated by late afternoon light.
What Yosemite photographer hasn’t photographed these oaks, especially the four in the foreground? I know I can’t resist, and I’ve photographed them in every season and in conditions ranging from warm afternoons to winter mornings with snow on the ground. Here I photographed them during the last few minutes of direct light, just before the sun dropped behind ridges to the west, and after the light had already left the meadow, the forest and the Valley walls beyond.
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.
Wolf lichen on a tree trunk near LeConte Lodge comes back to life with autumn Rains, Yosemite Valley.
If you read the “technical data” at the end of this post, you know that it was dark in this forest! The location is near the Le Conte Lodge (across the road from the Housekeeping Camp) along the south side of Yosemite Valley, and in an area where the tall cliffs approach very closely to the road and trail. Because of this it is deeply shaded for a good part of the day, especially during this time of the years.
I had gone here looking for maple leaves and for the large oaks that grow near the lodge. I just happened to see this interesting bark texture as I hiked past and noticed the brilliant – almost fluorescent – greens of the lichen in contrast to the dull color of the tree. While it was dark here and the shot required a long exposure, an upside was that the soft, diffused light lowered the contrast of the scene to manageable levels.
(I originally referred to “moss” in the title and description of this photo. Thanks to “Dave” for setting me straight and identifying it as fruticose lichen.)
Fall colors and mist along the Merced River, Yosemite Valley.
Returning to the land of color – after a spate of recent black and white posts – this is a photograph made on a rainy day along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley, as fall color came to the trees and bushes and fog drifted along the walls of the Valley. This photograph was made from the bridge near Curry Village as it rained lightly and the colors were reflected in the calm surface of the river. Probably because of the damp weather and the relatively early hour there was hardly any one else around, and this in a location that is often quite busy.
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.
Cattle graze in front of large aspen groves near Conway Summit, California.
Just about anyone who has every photographed aspens in the area around Lee Vining is probably familiar with this location – and I’ve certainly shot there quite a few times. From highway 395 the aspens extend west and up toward the peaks of the Sierra crest, and the at the right hour in the late afternoon the backlight can light up the leaves of the trees. When I visited this time the trees were in transition with some still green, others very colorful, and some almost leafless already. I was also lucky to have some clouds at the end of several cloudless days of photography. (Normal people like perfect blue sky, but photographers are not normal – we tend to like weather!) When I saw the clouds starting to form above the crest early in the afternoon I thought that something interesting might happen later near Conway so I made a point of heading that direction.
This photograph features, of all things, cattle – not my usual subject, perhaps! The area where these aspens grow seems to be at least as much a pasture as it is aspen groves, and I’ve seen cattle grazing in this spot before. (See comments for a note from a member of the family that owns the land.) As the clouds created shadows over the higher slopes in the background, for a moment the sun still hit the foreground trees and these cattle.
This shot also ties in with my recent post on using various focal lengths for landscape photography, in that this photograph was made with what some might regard as an unlikely landscape lens, a 100-400mm zoom! But in this case, this lens at 250mm was just what I needed to more tightly frame the bit of foreground pasture and sunlit trees and compress the distance between them and the shadowed hills beyond.
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.
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