Tag Archives: hills

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

Aspen Groves, Afternoon Light

October 20, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Late afternoon sun backlights the brilliant fall colors of aspen groves along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada near Conway Summit.

This is one of what is likely to be a series of very gaudy and colorful photographs of autumn aspen color, much of it photographed at Conway Summit along highway 395 just north of Lee Vining and Mono Lake. Keep your sunglasses handy!

If you happen to arrive at the Conway Summit area at the right point in the fall color season, you can be treated to an astonishingly large and brilliant show of aspen color. (It isn’t a sure bet though. Some years it is not nearly as spectacular. ) This year the trees seemed to turn quite suddenly. A week earlier there had been a lot of very green trees at this elevation along the east side of the Sierra, and many of us expected that the most striking colors would not come until as much as a week later. But nature wasn’t listening, and one week after I had seen so much green, the aspens all along the eastern escarpment of the range were turning golden and many other shade, frequently all the way down to the level of Owens Valley.

After shooting in the early morning out in Owens Vally and then hiking up to Parsons Lake in the middle of the day, I finally made my way up north to Conway Summit just before what I regard as the ideal time to photograph aspen color here, namely during the last hour or so before the sun drops below the peaks of the Sierra to the west. During this period the trees are back- and side-lit in very dramatic ways. While shooting almost directly into the sun can be tricky, the backlit trees really light up. At first I was a bit concerned when I arrived since clouds over the crest threatened to end the light show early, and they actually did interfere at times. But they also broke up the light a bit and provided a combination of ever-changing light and shadow patterns. One moment the light would strike one area and I would shoot in that direction. A moment later that light was gone, but shortly it would appear in another spot – and I’d swivel the camera around and work that subject for a moment.

This little pair of groves is one that I’ve watched and photographed for several years. I like the way that it stands apart from the much larger main groves and has the plain grass and sagebrush covered hills as background. I made a series of exposures of this subject, and in this one the light crossing from left to right not only struck the colorful trees but also lit up some of the gentle ridges of the slopes beyond.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Schoolhouse Ruins, Rhyolite

October 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sunlight shine through the window frames of the ruins of the abandoned schoolhouse in the ghost town of Rhyolite Nevada, near Death Valley National Park.

The ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada is located just east of the boundary of Death Valley National Park, along the edge of the Amargosa Valley, and not far from Beatty, Nevada, which itself is close to the Nevada Test Site. Put all of that together and you have the potential for a bit of a spooky place!

Rhyolite was a short-lived mining town in the early 1900s, when it apparently was home to thousands of people who streamed to this forsaken landscape to find silver. The town was eventually abandoned – although some mining still takes place in the area – but a good number of the larger buildings are still there, in various states of decay. An old train station that looks pretty fancy is fenced off to keep us out, but you can walk (respectfully and carefully!) among many other old structures including the old school house that is the subject of this photograph.

I’ve been out here a number of times and dawn is my favorite time to photograph here. The light makes it to many of the old ruins very shortly after actual sunrise, and there is a moment of often beautiful light at this time. From Rhyolite the hills inside Death Valley National Park are visible to the west and above the nearer hills you can see Telescope Peak, the highest point in the park at over 11,000′ elevation.

The school (like a few of the other ruins) looks like it must have been a very large and robust structure. Even though the roof and the second floor are gone, almost all of the exterior walls still stand and don’t show any immediate signs of incipient collapse. On this morning I made a series of photographs from just inside one of the “doorways” of the school with a wide-angle lens. I selected and shared a few of them back in 2009, but I recently went back to my original raw files and decided to try this one in black and white.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Desert Pond and Sierra Nevada Dawn

October 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Morning mist rises above a high desert pond reflecting the lower slopes of the eastern Sierra Nevada near McGee Creek.

On the second morning of my first fall color to the eastern Sierra this autumn, having been less than astonished by this year’s color so far, I decided to head instead out into Owens Valley to shoot back toward the mountains and to shoot some subject in Owens Valley itself. I started at this little lake a few miles east of highway 395, where great reflections of the range lit by morning sun area often seen. This photograph looks across the small lake towards McGee Creek Canyon. (McGee Creek isn’t a bad place to look for aspen color…)

I arrived here before sunrise and was set up and ready to go before the first light hit the peaks in the area of Mt. McGee and Mt. Morgan. As I stood (freezing!) by the shore of this small lake, waiting for the light that I knew was coming, a truck came up the lonely road to this place, passed the pond, made a u-turn, and slowed down by my vehicle, which was parked along the main road. My first thoughts were “this is either another photographer or someone who is checking out my car… for purposes I don’t want to think about.” However the vehicle kept going. A few moments later I discovered that this was a photographer, and he and his dog took up a position along the far shoreline. A few days later I was looking through an online landscape photography forum and I came across a photograph that looked like it had been shot from about that photographer’s position, and in which the conditions looked darn near identical to what I saw that morning. I contacted the photographer and found out that, indeed, he was the person I had seen that morning. (If you wonder why we didn’t touch base on the scene… a) we were both busy shooting the entire time, b) we were on opposites sides of the lake, and c) even though I yelled a greeting he didn’t hear.)

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley

Ranch and Morning Fog, Owens Valley

October 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

As is often the case, there is a story behind this photograph – an image that I think is fairly atypical of my work, at least as to the subject.

A year ago, almost to the day, I was also in the eastern Sierra to photograph aspens. And on that day I got up very early at my lodging in Mammoth and headed out before sunrise, which it was still dark actually, without a fixed idea of where or what I was going to photograph. I reached highway 395 and headed south, with a vague idea of heading up one of the promising canyons such as that of McGee or perhaps Rock Creek. But very soon I saw fog out in Owens Valley above Crowley Lake and I started thinking of instead heading away from the Sierra and out into that Valley. I ended up at a small pond from which I photographed the light from the rising sun as it hit the eastern slopes of the Sierra.

That show was over fairly quickly, so I decided to explore a bit. I had noticed mist and fog in various places in the surrounding area. Some of it seemed to come from small hot springs while in other places it seemed to extensive for that. I picked, more or less randomly, some gravel roads that headed toward the foggy areas and ended up on Hot Creek, where I made several photographs of and through the fog rising from the water.

Fast forward to this year. The first day of aspen shooting was productive, but the colors were overall not really as spectacular as I had hoped. If the intended subject “isn’t happening,” I’ll often change course and look for something else. So, once again I woke up without an aspen photography plan, but with two other vague ideas in mind. One was to go up to Minaret Summit and photograph the first light on the Minarets and Ritter and Banner Peaks. The other was to drive south again on 395 to see what would happen. When I got in my car to head out I still literally did not know where I would go. I sat in the car a moment and then, for reasons that I can’t recall, picked the 395 option. (Later I realized that the other option could have been productive, too.) I headed south on 395 and was astonished to see – again! – the fog over Crowley and the mist rising out in Owens Valley. So I went to my little lake to shoot there first and then headed out to where I had shot Hot Creek last year, but this time I kept going. At one point I passed this small range while heading out but couldn’t see a shot. Later on my return trip I passed it again, and this time I saw the stock grazing in the frozen meadow next to this small creek, with mist and fog rising everywhere. I stopped.

(By the way, this is a color photograph…)

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