Tag Archives: green

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Spring Green

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Spring Green
Spring foliage growing in the hills of Santa Clara County.

Spring Green. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Spring foliage growing in the hills of Santa Clara County.

This little intimate landscape vignette comes from a rural county park not far from where I live. I’ve hiked this location for several decades. It is one of my go-to places for quick doses of nature, as I can go there and get in a good hike between breakfast and lunch. Most of the park consists of rather open oak and grassland country, but there are places in the lowlands where things can be quite lush and green at the right times of the year, especially during California’s early spring “impossibly green” season.

I love traveling to more distant landscapes as much as anyone — going to places that seem more rugged and further from the civilized world. But over the years I’ve come to treasure the more local landscapes, too. Admittedly, I’m blessed by living less than an hour from redwood groves and the Pacific Ocean, and only a few hours from the Sierra. But much closer and seemingly less spectacular locations abound here, too.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Lake, Submerged Rocks

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Sierra Lake, Submerged Rocks
By the shore of an Eastern Sierra backcountry lake with a ledge of submerged rocks.

Sierra Lake, Submerged Rocks. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

By the shore of an Eastern Sierra backcountry lake with a ledge of submerged rocks.

Recently I have had more than one excuse to go back and revisit photographs from previous years. First, this has been an attractive way to find “new old” work during this time of restrictions on travel. Second, I’m involved in a project (about which I can’t say more at the moment) that required me to spend a lot of time during the past month reviewing photographs from a particular subset of my Sierra Nevada photographs. It has been wonderful to relive a set of wonderful backcountry trips I took since about 2008 and, in the process, “discover” a lot of images that I had somehow left behind.

This is one of those photographs. I’ve often wondered about how it is that certain photographs seem to need to “age” for months or years before they make sense. In this case, I think what happened is that when I considered photographs from this place made on this day that I selected another image, worked my way through it, and then moved on. In essence, this one was “left on the cutting room floor” during that editing process. The scene is a high country lake — which lake hardly matters — where rocks under shallow, shoreline water contrast with the intense aqua color of the deeper water.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

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

Photographs: Nature

Leaves in Rain

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Leaves in Rain, Portland
“Leaves in Rain” — Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Californians have been dealing with strange weather patterns for more than a decade now — a five-year drought, a few years of way above average rainfall, and then the current season that has been almost completely rainless up until now. As I write this the pendulum is apparently about the swing the other direction, and the forecasts for my part of the state predict an “atmospheric river” storm later this week that has the potential to bring absurd amounts of rain over the course of a few days. It seems to be feast or famine, though the amount of recent rain famine has been the biggest concern.

While this photograph is evocative of the weather we’re about to have, it comes from a naturally wetter place a few hundred miles to the north, namely Portland, Oregon. On a spring visit a few years back we ended up in one of that cities urban parks on a cloudy and wet day, and as we wandered though gardens I stopped to photograph these leaves.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Sand Dune Plants, Evening

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Sand Dune Plants, Evening
Low plants eke out an existence on Death Valley sand dunes.

Sand Dune Plants, Evening. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Low plants eke out an existence on Death Valley sand dunes.

Since travel to places as distant as Death Valley National Park is off the table right now, I’m vicariously experiencing one of my favorite places to be in the winter by reviewing my raw file archive from a visit in 2013. I visit DEVA every winter and sometimes in early spring, and I hope that California travel restrictions will moderate in a month or two from now and I’ll still be able to visit this year.

As I go back over these photographs, it looks like it was a fairly typical sort of day in DEVA for me. I had gotten up very early, driven east from the Valley, and turned onto Titus Canyon Road. I spent the morning and early afternoon on that route, and perhaps I share a few photographs from that familiar adventure soon, too. It looks like I returned to camp, probably for a late lunch, before heading back on in the late afternoon to photograph in sand dunes. Along the way to a spot I had in mind, I paused to photograph these small plants growing among the patterns of windblown sand, no doubt momentarily marveling at the apparent challenge of finding a way to live in such a spot.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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