I frequently go out and photograph for a morning or a day, or even as briefly as an hour or two. My instincts — for place and for seeing — are such that I can usually get myself into a productive state of mind quickly enough to make worthwhile photographs even with so little time. But I’m fortunate to be able to head out for much longer periods of photography several times each year, ranging from a few days to as much as several weeks — and this experience is very different from that of the shorter sessions and, I think, produces a different kind of photographic work.

As I continue to work my way through hundreds of frames that I brought back recently from ten early September days in the Yosemite backcountry, I begin to wrap my brain around the entirety of the collection of images and I start to see some patterns. One of these is a process that is a combination of “focusing in” and “settling in,” something that takes place in several ways over the course of a long trip like this one.

The transition is obvious when viewed in retrospect — the feelings of excitement and looking forward to the adventure at the beginning are very different from the feelings as the trip comes to an end, which are a combination of an in-the-moment focus and a certain amount of retrospection. At the beginning, no matter how many times I have been out on the trail (a total that can be measured in years at this point), there is always a feeling of excitement and unknown potentials on that first day. I tend to be attracted to the bigger and more obvious elements in the landscape, and a first look around a new location on a day near the beginning of a trip often sees me photographing many of the big, impressive, and obvious subjects.

Then the inevitable transition begins. There might first be a feeling of “I think I’ve photographed everything here,” followed by the now-familiar understanding that I haven’t, and a decision to wander about and see what I’ve missed. This (purposeful) wandering always leads me to see things that I missed at first, often smaller things that I hadn’t seen because I was not yet looking closely enough or sufficiently tuned in to the nuances of the place. And before long I’m finding compositions in a bit of meadow grass, pine cones littering the forest floor in morning light, the textures and forms of granite, and light shining through trees.

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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