Tag Archives: haze

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

Morning Haze and Light, Shoreline Trees

October 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees at the edge of a Sierra Nevada subalpine lake in morning light, Yosemite National Park

This is another photograph from that magical first day of shooting at a location that I would stay at for nearly a full week. As I wrote previously, the magic of this first morning comes from many things. Recognition is one of them — the experience of experiencing again the familiar elements of the Sierra backcountry that I have known for so many years: the sounds of gentle wind and water lapping at the end of the lake, the stillness of the morning air, that beautiful light coming over a ridge and striking trees and rocks from behind, the bits of detritus along the shoreline. A sense of expectation is another — the focus on seeing what is new at this place, the almost certain knowledge that I will discover new and unexpected things during the upcoming days.

On this morning I walked down to this lake for the first time. (I had arrived so late the previous day — after sunset, actually — that I had not even gone to the shoreline.) I began to circle around its west side slowly, first on a trail through flat terrain near where we camped, and then on rockier areas that forced me to ascend above the water a bit. All the time I was looking for subjects and compositions — though it would take a few more days before I fully fell into the ideal mode of seeing. I love backlight and I live juxtapositions of subjects, and I was attracted to the fringe of morning light on the branches of the trees at left and on the grasses below, and to how they contrasted with the deeply shaded area beyond.

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

Evening Light, Haze, Granite

October 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Soft evening light among granite slabs and cliffs in the Yosemite backcountry

Near our Yosemite backcountry camp there was a beautiful granite bowl, with a bench on top with an open view to the west down the canyon of the nearby river. In the late afternoon and evening we were photographing lots of mostly small details in this area — trees growing out of improbably small cracks and potholes, rocks, and the colors and textures of the granite slabs.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, its light spread almost directly up the length of the canyon. A large wildfire in another part of the park had left the air smoky and the smoke added a warm coloration to the atmosphere. As these conditions came on I remembered that in the past I had found this tree high up on one of the canyon walls in the evening and had photographed it in similar late day light — so I turned the camera in that direction, and just in time! I made a vertical format photograph as the last bright light broke over the shoulder of the granite and lit the tree. I decided to turn the camera to landscape orientation, and by the time I did the light was already starting to leave the tree — and this photograph ended up with softer light and a darker quality than the first one.

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

Canyon, Haze

October 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon haze fills the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River

Westward flowing rivers, descending through deep canyons toward California’s Great Central Valley, are a major feature of the Sierra Nevada. Although one major river, the Kern, heads south and many smaller creeks take a short route down the eastern escarpment of the range, the gradual slope from the west means that the west side rivers often drain huge areas of the range and, though a combination of ancient glaciation and continuing river erosion, have cut many impressive canyons. Some are popular and frequently visited, such as Yosemite Valley and to a lesser extent Kings Canyon, but most of the others are not as well known.

On a hazy late afternoon I climbed the spine of some low granite ridges above the lake where we were camped and found myself looking directly down the course of the Tuolumne River as it makes its way through a deep and twisting canyon toward… sadly, the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Fortunately, that abomination is not visible from this point, and instead the view is of a series of overlapping and receding ridges dropping to the bottom of the huge and remote canyon.

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

Tree, Canyon, Wildfire Haze

October 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Smoke from the 2014 Meadow fire colors late afternoon light on a tree and granite canyon in the Yosemite backcountry.

After a number of days spent photographing at a higher elevation location, our group descended into one of the great river canyons of the Yosemite backcountry, where we made camp for the final days of our 10-day photographic trip. This change gave us the opportunity to shoot a number of subjects that were quite different from those that we concentrated on at the earlier location, and it also let us revisit some locations and subjects that we had all photographed in the past. While some might wonder at the notion of revisiting a place when so many new places remain unexplored, there is something special about returning to a place and learning its patterns more deeply.

On this afternoon I ascended a nearby granite ridge, from which there is a wonderful view down this river canyon as it descends toward California’s Central Valley. As is typical at this time of year in the Sierra — though a bit more prevalent than usual in this drought year — the haze, smell, and coloration of wildfire smoke was in the air. In this photograph, the smoke and the late hour produced an unusual coloration in this scene as I shot through the trunk and branches of a large tree on the ridge.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: haze

Morning Haze and Light, Shoreline Trees

Evening Light, Haze, Granite

Canyon, Haze

Tree, Canyon, Wildfire Haze

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