Tag Archives: high

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

Trees and Red Rock, High Country

December 18, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Backlit trees in a high country terrain of rugged red rock sandstone, Zion National Park

Since this has been a recurring theme in my photographs from Zion National Park in October, I think I’ll keep the commentary a bit short on this one. I made the photograph along the Mount Carmel Highway, which passes through high country along an east-west route though the park. We had a day here while on our way to our eventual destination to the east, so we decided to focus on this high country area, with its deep washes and slot canyons, autumn colors, and rounded forms of various types of layered sandstone.

In this area the sandstone was a sort of medium red – not as intense as some of the deeper strata nor as light as some of the nearly white rocks found elsewhere. This rock was finely layered in many places, and formed into a small world of ridges and domes covered with widely spaced trees. I photographed the scene in afternoon light, when the sun was shining from behind the trees and creating a sort of halo of light for each one. Because of the backlight, a bit of atmospheric haze is present and the underlying rocks take on a deeper tone. Every so often a friend of fellow photographer might refer to something they call “G Dan light,” and this is it – the light of backlit trees, photographed by shooting almost directly into the sun, with just a bit of haze.

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

Red Rock and Trees, Afternoon Light

December 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Back-lit trees in low afternoon sun light grow on rocky sandstone high country, Zion National Park

As much as I have come to love Zion Canyon itself, with its monumental cliffs, winding Virgin River, and cottonwood trees, something still draws me more strongly to the high country such as that found along the Mount Carmel Highway. (I’m sure that the “real” backcountry will eventually appeal to me just as much, but my “getting acquainted” process with Zion is still in its relatively early phase.) This higher elevation terrain, which can at first perhaps seem somewhat overly complex and even “disorganized – if that makes sense – has come to hold more interest for me photographically, though it has been a bit more difficult to figure out how and when and where to photograph it. I was intrigued by these wonderfully complex sandstone patterns of curves and lines when I first saw them, but initially had a hard time seeing coherent photographs among them.

Since my first visit – less than a year ago, believe it or not – I have now had the opportunity to revisit this area on quite a few days, and I feel like I’m starting to “get” its rhythms. Initially it was a matter of passing along the roadway through the park and catching glimpses of juxtapositions of features, bits of light or color, and various canyons and prominences and thinking “there must be a way to photograph that.” Return visits, in various types of light, during two seasons, and at all hours of the day have helped me figure it out. Among my favorite subjects here (and elsewhere!) are backlit trees, here combined with some low ridges and the swooping curves and textures of the wonderful red rock.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Tree and Pinnacle, Pacific Sunset

September 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The last evening light falls on a tree and a rocky pinnacle high above the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco, California.

On the return drive from our late-August sojourn to the Mendocino Coast, we returned to the Bay Area by the less efficient but more spectacular route and drove the coast on Highway 1, the “coast highway.” For the most part the road hugs the coastline, alternately dipping down to the shoreline and climbing to the tops of very tall coastal bluffs, and occasionally running inland for a short distance. We stopped in Point Reyes Station for dinner (and we can now heartily recommend Osteria Stellina!) and then continued on – and as we did I began to get a sense of where we might be for the golden hour light. It seemed like we would likely pass Stinson Beach – which seemed fine, since I didn’t have an interest in photographing there – and be somewhere south of there in the Marin Headlands.

As we ascended the high and steep road perched along the cliffs south of Stinson Beach, a lot of stuff started happening all at once. I knew that we were getting very close to “that” light, when we spotted a lone coyote along a ridge above the road… right below a large ridgeline rock and above which the nearly full moon had just appeared. Really! So we obviously had to stop and see what we could do with that subject – which turned out to be more difficult that I had thought. At about this time other likely “targets” started to appear, and I photographed back towards Stinson Beach, directly into the sun-lit haze from northern California forest fires. Then I looked closer to my location and saw this windswept tree catching the last bit of light, with a single rugged pinnacle behind it, and beyond that the surface of the Pacific Ocean, fading into the mist and picking up the pink tones of the setting sun.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Flock

August 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A high key rendering of a photograph of a flock of pelicans above the Point Lobos State Reserve.

I photograph birds sometimes – more these days than at some times in the past – but they are generally not my main passion in photography, with a few exceptions. The first of those, however, is photographing pelicans along the Pacific Ocean coast of California where these big, magnificent birds seem to stand apart from the other birds of the area. They are bigger, they often coast rather than flapping wings quickly, when seen they are most often simply passing by on their way to and from some unknown other place, and they overall seem to me to have an almost prehistoric aspect.

Most often when I photograph them I go to some place where I think they will pass and I wait. Places where a rocky peninsula extends a bit into the ocean can be likely spots, as are the top edges of certain bluffs above cliffs, where they seem to float past on updrafts from onshore winds. Often as I wait and watch for them I see other birds and I may photograph them, but I’m always watching in the further distance for the groups of pelicans, usually strung out in lines of a few birds to, sometimes, many – and as soon as I spot them the other birds are forgotten as I watch the pelicans approach. I understand that this year the California pelicans are stressed by some sort of environmental change and many have died and others seem undernourished. This may partly explain why I saw so few on this July visit to Point Lobos, mostly only stray groups of two or three that were separated widely from one another. But late in the day a huge flock came from the south and, surprisingly, rather than floating past quickly they moved slightly inland, where I think they found a thermal, and spent several minutes coasting in circles as they rose higher.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: high

Trees and Red Rock, High Country

Red Rock and Trees, Afternoon Light

Tree and Pinnacle, Pacific Sunset

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