Tag Archives: green

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

One Green Leaf

January 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

My two October trips to photograph in Utah extended my ongoing education about the place, and one of the locations about which I had and still have the most to learn is Capitol Reef National Park. My encounter with this park, in 2012, was a bit superficial, though my excuse is that we were only passing through on our way to another place. All I saw was the short highway drive that passed through the park via the Fruita District — the rest of the park remained a complete mystery. In October I was there twice. On the first visit I was in the area enough to start to get a bit of a feel for the place, though I mostly still stuck to popular and accessible areas, with the addition of a bit of hiking and a long drive on gravel roads down the less-visited side of the park. On the second visit I learned and saw a bit more – enough to convince me that there is much more to this park and that I want to return.

I made this photograph in a short slot canyon in an out-of-the way area of the park. We drove there on a very cold morning and headed into the canyon while the temperature still hovered around freezing. There was no one else there, and we barely even saw anyone else on the long drive to get there. The little canyon itself was quite beautiful and full of interesting surprises – juxtapositions of glowing red-orange walls and shaded blue-purple walls, brilliantly colorful gambel oak leaves, large sandstone faces and walls, and more. As I investigate a place like this I try to let my eyes roam beyond the first things I see, and try to also see smaller things that could easily be missed. Here I happened to look down at my feet – sometimes a good thing to do! – and see that the floor of the stream bed carpeted with oak and other leaves that had recently fallen, and this batch of brown and tan leaves held one that was still green.

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.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees and Cloud-Filled Sky

December 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Massive old cottonwood trees silhouetted against the cloud-filled autumn sky, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

This photograph was a sort of passing whimsy, in a sense. In this particular canyon that we visited in late October, our attention as mostly focused on avoiding inclusion of the sky in the frame. For the most part, the tall cliff walls were almost the default background for many photographs, so I paid little attention to the sky, for the most part, except to contrive ways to keep its distracting solid blue out of the frame, where it would distract from the colors and shapes and textures of rock and trees and water.

But when I came straight up to this tree just before we entered a narrow section of the canyon, it is was impossible ignore. It is actually a single tree that splits into two twin trunks near its base, with each trunk then sprouting a group of curving, twisting and interlocking branches high above the ground. With this subject, out in the open as it was, photographing it against the background of rock would not have worked, and it was so tall that I was essentially forced to shoot it with the camera pointing up. Fortunately, there were interesting clouds in the sky, and even more fortuitously the lines in the clouds roughly lined up with the left half of the v-shape of the two converging ridges down that canyon. Even better, this shallow “v” of the canyon rims and low peaks beyond echoed and cradled the somewhat similar shape found in the upper branches of the tree.

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

Trees and Pasture, Central Valley

December 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy light in clearing tule fog on solitary trees in California Central Valley pasture land

This is another in a series that might perhaps be called “accidental landscapes.” We were actually at a wildlife refuge not to photograph landscape subjects but to photograph migratory birds – mostly geese, herons, ibises, cranes, egrets and the like. Part of that activity involves driving around trying to find the darn critters! And sometimes during these drives my eyes wander over to something that is much more like a landscape than a bird. I have photographed this very tree in the past, most recently a matter of weeks earlier when I shot it from a slightly different angle that made it appear more isolated, and when it was full of a flock of red-winged blackbirds.

The first thing that attracted my attention this time was something small, the bit of warm side-light on the trunk of the foreground tree. Seeing that, I wondered how I might come up with a composition that made sense and included this little feature. First, I wanted this tree to fill a good portion of the frame. However that seemed a bit too straightforward, so I just moved around a bit until the more distant near-twin tree was just to the left of the foreground tree, being careful to not let them overlap. The photograph was shot handheld, with the same lens that stayed on my camera all day long, a 100-400mm zoom. We moved on and soon found lots of Ross’s geese on the far side of this pasture.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees and Sandstone Cliffs

November 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cottonwood trees in Capitol Gorge at the base of sandstone cliffs, Capitol Reef National Park.

Although we had passed through Capitol Reef National Park on our way to Moab earlier this year, I really was mostly unaware of the nature or extent of this park. On this trip we decided to spend some more substantial time here and investigate something more than just the highway that passes through it! Although this park still warrants a lot more exploration (especially in its northern section) we visited the popular west-side scenic areas and drove the long gravel road down the east side of the park, up the steep switchback road into the high country, and then followed the Burr Trail back down to Boulder.

This photograph was made in one of the more accessible places along the west side. Photographing cottonwoods was on my (rather long) list of things to do on this visit, and there are plenty of them in this park! I was a bit too early, for the most part, to find the brilliant yellow-gold autumn color, but the way that the tops of this group of trees lined up with the slanting angles of the huge sandstone layers and cliffs caught my attention, along with the colors intensified by the backlight.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: green

One Green Leaf

Trees and Pasture, Central Valley

Cottonwood Trees and Sandstone Cliffs

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