Tag Archives: grow

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

Tree and Sandstone Cliff

May 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

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.

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

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

May 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Plants grow among cracks of a fractured sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

On my first morning in Zion (we had arrived there the previous afternoon) we headed up into the park and Zion Canyon, though which the Virgin River flows. Although I was more or less not looking for icons to photograph, I had stopped along the way to photograph that icon, the view of the Watchman from the bridge on the Mt. Carmel highway. (At least I could console myself that I was not shooting it at the usual sunset time, but instead in the early morning. ;-) After a brief stop for that purpose, I headed up the canyon with a plan of visiting the Weeping Rocks and seeing what sort of photographs might be possible there.

After a short walk up to the rocks, I figured out that it wasn’t going to quite be my photographic “cup of tea.” However, along this walk I did find some other interesting subjects. One that I’ve shared previously was a very close view of some brand new spring leaves on the trees that grow along the trail. Another subject was the nearby sandstone cliffs that here come down close to the level of the trail. One area nearby featured immense vertical blocks of the striking red sandstone, with interesting crack systems and some plants growing in the cracks. I made several exposures of this area in full shade, and this vertical composition is one that I like a lot. I’ve probably said this before and I’ll no doubt mention it again, but for a guy who is so used to shooting the equally impressive but much less colorful granite of the Sierra, the colors of these rocks proved irresistible! And the color variations are amazing – here you can see some areas where the color trends toward purple.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Boulder and Small Tree

December 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree grows from the side of a boulder near the shoreline of a subalpine back-country lake in Yosemite National Park.

This little tree seems like an impossibility. In a tiny crack in a very large boulder, some distance from the shore in this subalpine lake, it somehow manages to live and seemingly even thrive. It is hard to imagine a more difficult place for a tree to grow. It is also difficult, though interesting, to imagine what this tree might look like if it manages to succeed in the long-term and live for perhaps a hundred years or more. Will it get to the point that its roots begin to grow out of the small crack and spread across more of the rock, and might it form a small pocket of soil that supports other smaller plants?

I made the photograph in the morning, when the light of the early sun was just coming over a ridge above and to the right of the tree. It slanted across the top of the boulder and picked off the upper portion of the tree, leaving its lower truck and the face of the boulder in shade.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees, Granite, and Afternoon Haze

November 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon sun back-lights haze around trees growing on granite domes along the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

I’m a big fan of shooting almost straight into the sun, especially when haze is involved and even more so when backlit trees can be the subject. This photograph was made in essentially these very backlit conditions, with the direct sun just a bit above and to the side of the scene. I liked the way that the near tree’s branches had more presence in front of the haze-faded low contrast background of the nearby ridge with trees and the further ridge fading into the bright haze.

I posted a slightly different version of this scene last week – one in which I had placed the tree almost directly in the center of the frame. Although some will cite some “rule of composition” to disallow that sort of composition, I think that the rules don’t make a lot of sense if your way of applying them is to simply follow them slavishly. I consider them to be more like “observations about composition” than rules of composition. It isn’t that placing a subject in the center of the frame is wrong, it is just that doing so can have a very different effect than putting it along an edge, one-third of the way in from a corner, at the bottom or top of the frame, and so forth. It is more important to get a sense – either intuitive or analytical – of the effects might be of these different placement options. In any case, I liked the centered composition of the other version – centered compositions can have a certain kind of calm strength, and the centering perhaps focused a bit more attention on the tree and a bit less on the background.

At the same time, I like this more “tradition” composition that places the tree a bit off-center to the right side of the frame. In a way, this opens up the frame a bit and I think it gives the middle ridge and its trees a bit more presence. I think it also allows the viewer to see the subtle light on those middle distance trees a bit better. And speaking of that part of the scene… I made a mistake at the time of exposure. With the sun almost in the field of view of the lens, I had to shield the front of the lens from the sun – but in this image I apparently missed a bit since I found a fairly obvious reddish flare in part of the frame. I’m glad to say that by a combination of color balance correction, some control over saturation, and a bit of work with a curve…. I think that I have managed to make the flare go away!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: grow

Tree and Sandstone Cliff

Like this:

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

Like this:

Boulder and Small Tree

Like this:

Trees, Granite, and Afternoon Haze

Like this:

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

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

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