Tag Archives: grove

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

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

1 Comment
Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon - New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.
New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

I encountered this scene a short distance up the trail from the Temple of Sinawava area in Zion National Park, in the area below the start of “the Narrows.” Here the canyon of the Virgin River becomes quite narrow, eventually narrowing so much that the river often spans its entire width. These young trees, which were just beginning to show their spring leaves, are in along a slightly wider section where the river curves, and just be flooded during times of high water. Beyond, the river and the canyon twist right, left, and then back to the right again between the steep sandstone walls.

I’m always intrigued by trying to photograph these scenes of very dense foliage in which the frame ends up filled with a huge amount of detail. It is a challenge to try to create anything like an effective composition out of this complexity, and I think it is even more difficult to make such photographs “work” in the small presentation necessary for sharing on the web.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

2 Comments
Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon - New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.
New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

This is a type of photograph that I enjoy searching out – though it is also a type that can be difficult to present effectively in online jpg form, given the amount of fine detail that is present. The challenge is in trying to capture both the dense complexity of the thick foliage and the complex patterns of rock – and these things fill the frame completely – and still try to find some sort of compositional logic that might still be visible in the end. In general, I think these things work better in fairly large prints.

The scene is along a section of the Virgin River in Zion Canyon of Zion National Park. A trail continues up the canyon beyond the point that is accessible via the park service shuttles. Here the canyon gradually narrows, and thickets of young cottonwood trees grow on the valley floor in what I believe must be the sediment left behind by floods. The canyon itself becomes a bit more convoluted, twisting right and left around the vertical sandstone walls. For much of the day there is little or no direct sunlight at the bottom of the canyon, and that was certainly the case during the time when I made this photograph.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Commentary

Cottonwood Trees and Sandstone, Spring

Leave a comment
Cottonwood Trees and Sandstone, Spring - A stand of cottonwoods with new spring growth against the backdrop of the vertical sandstone walls of Zion Canyon, Utah.
A stand of cottonwoods with new spring growth against the backdrop of the vertical sandstone walls of Zion Canyon, Utah.

Cottonwood Trees and Sandstone, Spring. Zion National Park, Utah. April 4. 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A stand of cottonwoods with new spring growth against the backdrop of the vertical sandstone walls of Zion Canyon, Utah.

I’ve seen so many beautiful photographs of cottonwood (and other) trees against sandstone cliffs, that I was anxious to search out some such scenes when I went to Zion and other Southwest locations in early April. After arriving in the town of Springdale, near the entrance to Zion and the Virgin River canyon, we headed up into the canyon for our first visit. Although I had seen plenty of photographs from the area, I had made a point of not researching any specific locations or shots – I’d rather find my own. As we entered the canyon, a friend’s description of the place as “Yosemite in red” came to mind – though this canyon in Zion has a much smaller and more intimate scale.

From the upper park service tram stop, we continued on up the canyon on the easy trail. If I were evaluating my day based on how far I hiked, it would have been a failure. I hardly ever walked more than a few dozen yards at a time without stopping to look around or scope out some new photographic opportunity. These trees were growing on the opposite side of the river, right up against the vertical sandstone walls, and the lack of direct sun softened the light on these trees and their brand new spring leaves.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Pacific Northwest

Tree Farm, Skagit Valley

Leave a comment
Tree Farm, Skagit Valley - Dense winter trees in the grove of a tree farm, Skagit Valley, Washington.
Dense winter trees in the grove of a tree farm, Skagit Valley, Washington.

Tree Farm, Skagit Valley. Skagit Valley, Washington, February 19, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense winter trees in the grove of a tree farm, Skagit Valley, Washington.

Back in February I spent a few days in Washington state, and during this visit I had an opportunity to spend one full day photographing in lower Skagit Valley north of Seattle. Among other things, main attractions there at this time of year can include spectacular views of some of the nearby snow-covered peaks of the Cascade range (or so I’m told… ;-), impressive flocks of migratory birds including trumpeter swans and snow geese, and other birds such as owls and bald eagles. Having recently become a big fan of photographing the migratory birds of California’s Central Valley, my main goal on this visit was to photograph the geese and swans.

I arrived in the area just before sunrise – or what would have been sunrise if it hadn’t been completely socked in by clouds and intermittently raining lightly. After a bit of looking around I found a great location for photographing gigantic flocks of snow geese as they landed, collected on the ground, and then suddenly took of in huge groups. A bit later in the day my brother Richard joined me. Since he actually knows this area, having lived and photographed here for many years, I took his lead and we moved on to look for bald eagles. (Well, we also moved on to have a wonderful brunch in a nearby town first…) After a bit of driving around we came to this spot which I understand is some sort of tree farm. Among these tall, slender, straight, and tightly packed trees, we spotted a few bald eagles roosting in the upper branches. We found one beautiful bird in trees very close to the road, stopped, and began to quietly get ready to shoot – but the bird was having none of it, and it flew to other trees that were too far off for photography. However, this grove itself seemed interesting to me, and in the soft, cloudy light I like the way that the white trunks and the dense small branches appeared against the background of a further ridge.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.