Tag Archives: lake

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

Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake

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Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake - Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.
Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

Snowflakes, Grass, and Frozen Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fresh snowflakes among leaves of grass on the frozen surface of Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

This past week we had the opportunity to do something that we’ll probably not get to do again – drive over Tioga Pass through Yosemite National Park in the middle of January. Until this year, the latest the road had been open was December 31. This year it was still open on January 17, though scheduled to close as I write this. It has been a very unusual weather year in many parts of California, including the Sierra. While the season began with earlier and heavier than usual snow storms way back in early October, this promising start to the snow season was just a tease. A month or so later, the tap was turned off and there was little rain through the end of the calendar year and on into January of 2012.

So with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity about to end with the promise of snow this week, we drove up the night before and then headed over Tioga Pass Road to Lee Vining and back, stopping frequently along the way. The weather in the morning was a bit of a surprise. I knew that a weak weather system – that had not brought any rain – was departing the Sierra, but we were surprised when we encountered very light snow flurries as we drove up Crane Flat Road to the junction with highway 120, and this continued as we started up Tioga Pass Road. When we arrived at Siesta Lake we found it partly sunny but still trying to snow just a bit. I set up to make a photograph of some trees in cloud-softened light, but as soon as I was ready to shoot the light died! I waited for a while, but finally decided that the light wasn’t returning. I decided to wander over to this small lake and see what I could find along the shoreline – and I found these dormant grasses, half-submerged in winter ice, with a sprinkling of snowflakes on the surface of the ice.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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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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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Meadow Plants, Early Snow

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Meadow Plants, Early Snow - Meadow plants bend beneath the weight of an early October snowfall, eastern Sierra Nevada, California.
Meadow Plants, Early Snow - Meadow plants bend beneath the weight of an early October snowfall, eastern Sierra Nevada, California.

Meadow Plants, Early Snow. North Lake, Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 8, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Meadow plants bend beneath the weight of an early October snowfall, eastern Sierra Nevada, California.

I made this photograph on a very cold early October morning high in the eastern Sierra after a series of early season snow storms had passed over the Sierra. The gravel road to North Lake had apparently just opened again on the morning I arrived, and few other people were there. I was there to photograph autumn aspen color, but the opportunity to photograph snow scenes so early in the season distracted me.

As I walked the road skirting the edge of North Lake, I passed by meadows that were completely covered by new, untouched snow. Here and there a few small plants managed to poke up from beneath the white blanket.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

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

Forest, Morning Light

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Forest, Morning Light
Forest, Morning Light

Forest, Morning Light. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light strikes a tree in a small grove of trees surrounded by Sierra Nevada granite boulders, Yosemite National Park.

This is really a very unremarkable scene in most ways. The foreground tree, with its top leaning over to the right, sits in a mixed forest/meadow area behind some rocks that look like the remains of an old glacial moraine. (This area was largely formed by glaciers, and their evidence is everywhere here.) Beyond the moraine and out of sight from this position is a good-size subalpine lake, and above that rocky, talus-covered slopes lead upwards to much higher alpine ridges and peaks.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

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

Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks

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Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks
Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks

Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small tree grows in a shoreline rock garden along a Sierra Nevada lake in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

I’m posting this one because a person who posted here a week or two ago on a similar photograph asked whether I had made any photographs that included a bit more of the surface of the lake and its reflections of the forest in the distance. In fact, I had one more, and this is it.

I made this photograph and the other one in soft light at the edge of the day when no direct sunlight was in the scene at all. While this can flatten the light a bit, it also tends to fill in that shadow areas and create a less harsh sort of light. In also contributed to the interesting reflected and diffused forms of the forest along the far bank of the lake, whose vertical forms cross the horizontal forms of underwater rocks along the bottom of the lake bed.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.