Tag Archives: haze

Autumn Haze, Sabrina Basin

October 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen colors scattered across the rugged granite landscape of Sabrina Basin

This particular view may be a familiar one to many who follow the autumn aspen color in the eastern Sierra Nevada, as Sabrina Basin and, more broadly, the Bishop Creek area, is well-known for extensive groves of aspens. This photograph comes from a point just a bit earlier in the color transition season than most of my photographs of the area, and a close look at some of the more distant ridges reveals extensive color among the smaller, high elevation aspens that typically change colors first. The foreground trees were also more colorful than usual for this late September date, though the afternoon backlight emphasizes the effect.

The Sierra present many different appearances, ranging from gentle meadows full of green grasses and flowing water to the most rugged, spare alpine regions filled with rocks and the hard edges of ridge lines. While an up close view of certain parts of this scene — perhaps from standing within one of the colorful aspen groves in the foreground — would present more of the gentle view, the panorama from this high, exposed location reveals the tremendous world of rugged granite in this part of the range, where the Sierra crest rises quite quickly from the high desert terrain to the east.

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

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

Granite Ridge, Trees

September 21, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tall trees on top of a granite ridge, Yosemite National Park

This has been a period of unprecedented drought in California as a whole and particularly in the Sierra Nevada. In the fourth of this series of drought years the Sierra is showing the strain. Creeks have stopped flowing, lake levels are significantly low, trees are under stress and dying throughout the range. This summer the annual wildfire season began much earlier than usual, and many fires spread quickly and took longer to contain. We certainly saw all of these effects during our week-long photographic sojourn in the Yosemite backcountry. Until we had a couple of days of (welcome!) rain near the end of the trip, the smoke was a major factor. On many days we had smoke so thick that we were concerned about our health, and the pall often made photography somewhat challenging. Fortunately, even on the smokiest days there were times when it was clear, too.

However, it is possible to see how to make photographs even in smoky conditions. On the plus side, some smoke can soften the light a bit, and the haze can enhance the atmospheric recession effect, which can emphasize the distances between subjects in front of the camera. The haze in this photograph comes partially from wildfire smoke. Here it muted to sometimes-difficult highlights on the granite, and it softened and muted the distant forest across the valley.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Meadow, Forest, and Dome

September 11, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon light along the edge of Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park

Late in the afternoon, about the time that many day visitors leave Tuolumne Meadows for their lodgings and when many campers are fixing dinner, I wandered out into the meadow with no particular destination in mind. With the exception of a few other walkers and two or three deer, I mostly had the meadow to myself. I walked slowly along a narrow finger of grasses between trees encroaching that are gradually encroaching on the meadow, passed through the last trees in one of these stands, and found myself in a large section of open meadow. After so many years in the Sierra and particularly in this place, it has a quiet and comfortable and unhurried feeling on an evening like this one.

Farther downstream the larger forest trees came to the edge of the meadow, and late afternoon golden light slanted across the meadow past these trees. Beyond the shoulder of a granite dome sloped down toward the lower terrain, catching the sun from the west.

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

Morning, Tuolumne Meadows, Mount Dana

August 26, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Lembert Dome and Mount Dana rise above Tuolumne Meadows on a cloudy summer morning

This is yet another of the stopped-on-my-way-somewhere-else photographs, often made unexpectedly as I encounter something I wasn’t really looking for and get distracted — though another way to put it is that I quickly fall into a different mode of seeing when I photograph, and I begin to recognize the potential in subjects that I might otherwise not have noticed. In this case I was headed towards a specific location that I had planned to visit this morning, with a rather specific subject in mind. I set out and, as almost always, my “photographer’s brain” engages and I start seeing potential photographs everywhere. There is a tricky balance sometimes between stopping for the thing I see right here and sticking to a plan to photograph that other thing that I want to see. (This is an old question in photography with the extreme answers ranging from “never pass up a subject in front of you for one that you might see elsewhere” to “make a plan and stick to it if you want to get the photograph you have in mind.” The truth is complex, situational, and depends as much on good fortune and good guesses perhaps as much as on any rational considerations.)

In any case, I skipped past a few opportunities/distractions but ended up stopping for this one. This is a fairly well-known view in this part of the Sierra, though not everyone sees it right at sunrise. I’ve often stopped to admire the scene and on occasion photograph it, usually with some beautiful haze partially obscuring distant details and perhaps making closer details clearer by contrast. Since I am familiar with the view and had a good idea of what I wanted the photograph to look like, stopping for a few minutes was sufficient to make the photograph… and I was back on the road to my original destination.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: haze

Autumn Haze, Sabrina Basin

Granite Ridge, Trees

Meadow, Forest, and Dome

Morning, Tuolumne Meadows, Mount Dana

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