Tag Archives: grow

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Mushrooms, Redwood Forest

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Mushrooms, Redwood Forest
Mushrooms, Redwood Forest

Mushrooms, Redwood Forest. Muir Woods National Monument, California. March 14, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mushrooms grow in the damp soil beneath Muir Woods National Monument redwood forest

On this late spring morning at Muir Woods National Monument I was on the hunt for trillium flowers. Sometimes when I’m looking for one thing I may tend to overlook other interesting things that are right under my nose. I was looking from trillium flowers… and I only saw trillium flowers. But eventually there often comes a moment when I sort of take a slow breath, look away from that central focus, and see the other things around me.

On a damp late spring morning at Muir Woods that “other things” is quite possibly some small living thing that might be hidden away in shadows or down so close to the soil that I don’t see it. And so it was with this small group of mushrooms, poking up from the damp earth in a very shady little spot on a steep section of the hill running alongside my trail. And once I saw this group of fungi, my focus changed and I began to see other mushrooms all over this small spot where a moment before I had only seen dirt.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees on Granite Ridge

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Trees on Granite Ridge
Trees on Granite Ridge

Trees on Granite Ridge. Yosemite National Park, California. May, 12, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rugged trees growing along the top of a glaciated granite ridge, Yosemite National Park

I made this photograph on my first visit of the season to the Tioga Pass area of the Yosemite National Park high country. I managed to be there on the first and second open days. This was an unusual though perhaps not unprecedented sort of opening, in that there was a record low amount of snow in the Sierra as the warm season began, and this was the second of two back-to-back low-snowfall winters. This season was an odd one. I was in the Sierra back in early fall and it seemed like we might actually have an early and wet winter. Certainly things played out that way through the end of 2012 – but then the tap was shut off and there was precious little precipitation at all during the first part of 2013. As you can see in the photograph, there was still some snow around, but it looked more like late June or even early July of a more typical year.

The photograph was made near a very popular location along Tioga Pass Road, though I walked more or less the opposite direction from the objects of everyone else’s interest to find a vantage point that let me photograph back across this granite ridge, littered with glacial erratic boulders and the debris from exfoliation, and supporting a few trees. The morning light slanted in from behind the ridge and the trees and left a bluish haze between this ridge and the even larger granite ridge across a deep valley.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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

Tree and Sandstone Cliff

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Tree and Sandstone Cliff - A tree grows from a crack in the face of a redrock sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.
A tree grows from a crack in the face of a redrock sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

Tree and Sandstone Cliff. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tree grows from a crack in the face of a redrock sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

If this photograph looks familiar, it may be because it is! A few weeks back I posted another photograph of more or less the same subject but in landscape orientation rather than portrait orientation. There are, no doubt, many examples of interesting trees growing out of surprisingly small cracks in the faces of sandstone cliffs in Zion and other similar areas, but I spotted this one in the “Big Bend” area of Zion Canyon, where I had stopped to photograph some spring cottonwood trees along the Virgin River.

I love the juxtaposition of the rich greens of the tree with the reds and browns of the sandstone cliffs. In many ways, these are two of the main colors of this part of the Southwest – with the addition of the blue of the sky. That palette of green, red, and blue is everywhere. And there is actually a bit of the blue here, too. The interesting coloration of the dark areas of the rock seems to be partly the result of reflections of the blue light from the blue sky that was above and behind my camera position.

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

Tree and Sandstone Cliff

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Tree and Sandstone Cliff - A tree grows from a crack in the face of a redrock sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.
A tree grows from a crack in the face of a redrock sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

Tree and Sandstone Cliff. Zion National Park, Utah. April 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tree grows from a crack in the face of a redrock sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

After a bit of a break, I’m back with a few more photographs from my early April shoot in various parts of Utah. To recap, this was – believe it or not – the first time I had photographed in that state. It was tremendous to experience what was to me a brand new landscape, especially since I far more often continue to work the wonderful but familiar subjects of California. We began our visit at Zion National Park, spending several days mostly in Zion Canyon along the Virgin River but also getting up to the high country to the east.

I made this photograph on a morning when we visited Weeping Rock, one of the well-known features of Zion Canyon. We may well have been a bit too early in the season, but I ended up more or less stumped by trying to find a way to photograph that feature that pleased me. However, on the walk to and from Weeping Rock I made several photographs of other features in the area that I like a lot. (One was a photo I shared earlier that included a close-up of a branch with new spring leaves.) If I recall correctly, I may have seen this tree growing out of cracks in the massive sandstone walls while at or just below Weeping Rock.

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.