Tag Archives: juniper

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

Trees and Granite, Morning

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Trees and Granite, Morning
Trees and Granite, Morning

Trees and Granite, Morning. Yosemite National Park, California. July 27, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light shines on the trees clinging to massive granite domes in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

I’ll write a bit less about this photograph since I posted it already in a color rendition and described some of the background of the image in that earlier post. The basic idea is that I used a very long focal length to isolate the single primary tree against a world of granite that recedes toward the rising sun that is above and out of the frame to the right.

When I made the photograph I had a pretty good idea that it might work as black and white. In fact, though I don’t recall for certain, I think I was leaning towards thinking of the scene in black and white when I made the exposure. (Those last two sentences must seem strange if not almost perverse to people whose primary background is in film!) Sometimes, as with this scene, I end up liking both versions, at least at first. While I may end up leaning toward one or the other more after I live with the prints a while, right now I go back and forth. Of course, when two things are different it is not necessarily the case that one must be better than the other; sometimes they are just different.

Oddly, one thing that inclined me towards black and white ends up also suggesting color. Because so much of the content of the frame is nearly monochromatic I think I originally felt that with so little color to work with that it might make sense to just let it be monochromatic. But then, “with so little color to work with,” the subtle effect of color begins, in some ways, to be even more important.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

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

Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome

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Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome
Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome

Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome. Yosemite National Park, California. July 27, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A weathered juniper tree grows high on the granite face of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park.

This is another “take” on the same juniper tree high up on the slopes of Pywiack Dome that was seen in another photograph of this area that I posted earlier this week. I went through a process of “refining” the photograph that I described in the earlier post, and this was the interpretation that I came up with right before the landscape orientation version that I posted earlier. Unlike that photograph, this one frames the area of the dome containing the tree more tightly.

The color balance is a bit different in this one, also. I thought about that quite a bit, at first feeling that the coloration should be essentially identical since the images were made at about the same time and include some of the same subject matter. But the more I thought about it – and the more I experimented with the results of trying for uniformity – the more I felt that the two photographs are different images and that different interpretations make sense.

These trees never cease to amaze me. I often come across what are evidently very old trees that seem to grow almost straight out of solid rock, and only a closer inspection reveals that roots have grown tightly into small and unlikely cracks and weaknesses in the granite. That this tree should have managed to take root half way up the side of this large dome is even more amazing, much less that it managed to avoid growing into the stunted and twisted sort of shape that is so common among such trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

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

Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning

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Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning
Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning

Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning. Yosemite National Park, California. July 27, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two juniper trees in morning light at the base of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park.

This strong and straight juniper and the smaller twin hiding behind it grow at the top of the rocky debris field at the base of this dome not far from Tenaya Lake in the Yosemite National Park high country. A bit later than the “golden hour” time, the morning light begins to spill around the side of the dome and illuminate these trees from behind, creating a glow in their branches and the branches of trees and brush around them.

Last night someone asked me if I choose when to go to the Sierra to photograph based on the weather conditions. I wish I had that luxury! To some extent I make general decisions about where and what to shoot based on the season – The Valley around the end the start of November, the east side in early October, etc. – but for the most part I go where I can go when I can go there. However, I do alter the focus of my shooting based on the current conditions. This late-July trip is a good example.

I associate certain types of light with different seasons, and I tend to look for clear and crisp light in late July along, accented by snow fields and lots of new growth. I was a bit surprised by the amount of haze in the atmosphere. In fact, in some ways it almost reminded me of very late summer and early fall when Sierra wildfires often create a smokey haze over the range. With this in mind, I figured out that crystal clear photographs of mountain peaks against sky were not going to be in the cards. Instead I focused more on closer subjects, and when I shot more distant subjects I thought a lot about how to use the haze, embracing its effect rather than regretting that I had to deal with it. This photograph is perhaps an example of both of those approaches. The main subject here, the central pair of trees, cannot be more than a couple hundred feet away, if that. Behind the trees and the slab are more distant granite domes and cliffs and forest winding up the mountainside. Shooting almost straight into the sun accentuated the hazy quality of the more distant elements of the scene and enhanced the sense of front to back distance, and separated the foreground trees from the background it a way that would not have been possible in “better” lighting conditions.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

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

Trees and Granite, Morning

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Trees and Granite, Morning
Trees and Granite, Morning

Trees and Granite, Morning. Yosemite National Park, California. July 27, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light shines on the trees clinging to massive granite domes in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was the result of an odd little sequence of events. While driving along Tioga Pass Road in the afternoon I looked more closely at an area that I have passed by many times and noticed that it was filled with glacial erratics, “loose” boulders left behind when glaciers retreated. It seemed like these boulders might be an interesting subject and since they were in a position where morning light seemed likely, I made a mental note to return in the morning over the next couple of days and see what I could photograph here.

The next morning, after photographing at dawn nearby, I decided to go to this spot and see what I could come up with. I arrived without a specific idea in mind beyond the plan to look around and see what I could find. My first idea was to photograph the boulders themselves, and I did make a few mediocre exposures of individual boulders and groups of boulders. As I played around with this idea I noticed that the light slanting across granite slabs a bit to the north of me looked interesting, especially since this light was also side- and back-lighting some of the trees. So I turned my attention to this potential subject.

Working with this idea I gradually became less interested in the boulders and more interested in the trees of the lodgepole forest that extended beyond the slabs, so I found a somewhat higher spot to shoot from and made a series of exposures that included layers of backlit trees extending beyond the granite. Beyond the trees was the base of Pywiack Dome, a subject that I have worked with a number of times in the past. Now I looked a bit higher than the forest that led my eye to the dome, and I photographed the boundary between the forest and the base of the dome. (Producing, I might add, a really, really boring photograph!) Looking a bit higher I saw the solitary tree near the lower left of this photograph, and I made a vertical exposure that included mostly just the tree and the expanse of granite above and around it. (This photograph will be here in a few days.) They I thought I would try a landscape orientation photograph, and as I worked with this I got the idea to include the right face of the closer granite dome against the darker shape of a more distant cliff. And, finally, I found this photograph.

(There is also a black and white version of this photograph. The text accompanying that version talks a bit about the black and white versus color issue.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)