Tag Archives: intimate

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Young Redwood Forest

June 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A forest of young second-growth coast redwood trees, Butano Redwood State Park

Today’s post will swing in essentially the completely opposite direction from yesterday’s, which featured a photograph made in one of the very driest and most desolate areas of a very dry and desolate place, Death Valley National Park. So today I share a photograph from a lush and green location, one of California’s redwood state parks—this one the Butano Redwoods State Park, near the California coast between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay.

The first day of June was a foggy one in the Bay Area and along the Central California coast, so it seemed like I might be able to find the fog-sun boundary a bit later in the morning that usual. With that in mind I drove over the hills to the coast and then headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Cruz, eventually turning onto a road that heads back up into the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains range. A few miles back from the ocean, I found the edge of the fog at this state park, where I walked up the valley of a creek running through the second-growth redwood forests, stopping frequently to make photographs of the lush green terrain until the fog cleared and the light became too intense.

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Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Forest, Spring

June 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dense spring growth and fog-filtered light in the forest at Butano Redwood State Park

I’ll stick with the redwoods theme for a bit longer and share another photograph from my recent first-time photography visit to the Butano Redwoods State Park along the California coast between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. I had not visited this park before, much less photographed it, though I had photographed along the access road that leads to it from the Pacific Coast Highway. It is a pleasure to actually “discover” a new park so close to home!

I chose to visit on this day at least partly because of the promising light. It remained foggy and cloudy along the coast pretty much all day, so I figured that if I went inland a few miles toward the redwoods I might catch the thinning fog and the soft light that it can produce. I found a trailhead, loaded up the camera pack and tripod, and headed out. There was so much to see in this lush forest that I made very slow progress, stopping every couple of minutes to consider and sometimes make another photograph. From this spot along the trail I found a view past closer trees and on into more distant growth, and I stopped to make a few photographs. In this one I chose to work with a vertical composition to emphasize the slender forms of the second-growth redwoods and other trees reaching toward the light.

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

Cascade, Boulders

June 1, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A seasonal waterfall cascades past granite boulders, Yosemite National Park

I guess I’ll go ahead and make this a “waterfall weekend” by posting a second photograph of the same little cascading creek that was featured in yesterday’s photograph. This small beauty is a seasonal cascade that is right next to the roadway—I’m definitely not taking any “wilderness photography” credit for this one. (Though the character if the creek is very similar to and remiss me of many such rocky creeks found in less accessible locations.) As is the case with some many such small creeks, this one comes and goes quickly in most years. It does not necessarily dry up completely, but it often diminishes to an unimpressive trickle later on.

Although the accessible location makes photographing this fall easy, there are still a few challenges. Perhaps the most mundane is that, given that one is photographing from the shoulder of a highway, you have to watch out for passing vehicles! From a photographic perspective there are a few more interesting challenges. One is that of composition. This section of the waterfall is some distance above the camera position, and there are only a few clean shots of it. I wanted some of the curving and flowing shapes at the top along with the faster moving, and hence narrower, section at the bottom, and I wanted to include the blocky, wet, and reflective rocks. The light is a bit tricky here, too. Fortunately, the cascade remains in shadow well after sunrise, but the best light seems to come at just about the moment when the sun starts to rise above the ridge behind the fall. Consequently, though it isn’t visible in this tightly cropped composition, I was shooting almost straight into the sun!

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

Granite, Falling Water

May 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A spring creek cascades across dark fractured granite, Yosemite National Park

Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road (Highway 120), which passes through the park and across the Sierra crest at Tioga Pass, opened earlier than usual this year. It was not the earliest recorded opening, but the very small snow pack of the winter season meant that in early May it looked much more like a typical June. There was some snow left on the ground, but rather than being the deep and compacted remains of months of winter snow it was mostly what was left from a single spring storm a few days earlier.

In a more typical year, a drive over this route on the opening weekend provides an experience that is, to my way of thinking, mostly about water. Not only do we get to see vast remaining snow banks holding water that will irrigate the Sierra for months to come, but the spring melt brings wild, watery scenes nearly everywhere. Waterfalls and creeks appear in places where there is almost no evidence of their existence weeks or months later. Creeks spill across the highway flood sections of it. Larger creeks and rivers overflow their banks and turn meadows into lakes. But not this year. The photograph features a small section of a larger cascade which bounces down a steep and rugged section of granite boulders. Beautiful as it is, it should look like this in late June rather than early May.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: intimate

Young Redwood Forest

Redwood Forest, Spring

Cascade, Boulders

Granite, Falling Water

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