Keith Walklet | G Dan Mitchell Photography

I will have more to say about this video and its context in a later post (though see below for a bit more information), but I wanted to share this Scot Miller video about the band of photographers known informally as “The First Light Group” and my role in the group.

There’s a lot more to say about the First Light project, but for now here is a little background. In the early 2000s the group assembled, with support from the Yosemite Conservancy, and headed into the Sierra Nevada backcountry with a special mission: to place landscape photographers in the wilderness for extended periods of time to create photographs that embody the character of these remote places. Over a period of nearly two decades we photographed all over the range.

You can subscribe to Scot Miller’s YouTube channel, where you’ll find more First Light videos and plenty of other material from him.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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A bit more than two decades ago (I believe it was 2001), the Yosemite Fund (now the Yosemite Conservancy) initiated a project to put groups of landscape photographers into the Yosemite backcountry for a week or more at a time. With pack animal support, the photographers were able to bring the range of equipment required to do this work, and to remain “out there” long enough to become deeply acquainted with these places and produce an extensive body of photographic work.

The initial group was comprised of Charles Cramer, Karl Kroeber, Scot Miller, Mike Osborne, and Keith S. Walklet. I started tagging along in about 2008 and eventually became one of the gang. Over the years the group — will occasional others join us — continued to photograph in the Yosemite backcountry and eventually branched out to work in other locations in the high country.

There have been few projects like this one, supporting serious photography in the High Sierra over a period of many years and producing an exception body of work.

Scot Miller is not only a fine still photographer, but also a very accomplished videographer. In addition to making his own beautiful photographs on these trips, from the very beginning he was documenting the group’s work in video form. More recently Scot managed to do a series of interviews with each of us, and he has begun releasing them on YouTube.

Below are links to some of the videos that are currently available. First the “origin story” of the group.