Tag Archives: landscape

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Shoreline Bench, Reflections

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Shoreline Bench, Reflections
A rocky bench above the reflecting surface of an alpine Sierra Nevada lake

Shoreline Bench, Reflections. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A rocky bench above the reflecting surface of an alpine Sierra Nevada lake.

Since roughly August of 2005 I have been posting a daily new photograph at my website (https://gdanmitchell.com) and on social media, almost always accompanied by a couple of paragraphs of background. Yes, that is 14 years of daily photograph posts at this site! That’s more than 5000 photograph posts as of the date of this on. I’ve done this for several reasons. First, it is a form of daily practice — the importance of which I learned about in my other life in the world of music. Second, I hope that revealing my working process and thinking about photographs may be useful to others trying to make sense of this medium.

This does mean that — obviously! — you’ll see more than one way of seeing a particular subject since I share this editing process here. Today’s photograph — from my recent weeklong shoot in the Eastern Sierra backcountry — is an example of this in at least a couple of ways. First of all, I recently shared another photograph of this same subject that interpreted it in a different way. (That photograph took a closer look at it — this one includes more of the surrounding visual context.) Secondly, if you scroll back to that other version, you may discover that I shared two examples of that one with different crops.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Cascade And Peaks, Morning

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Cascade And Peaks, Morning
Peaks lit by early morning light rirse above a Sierra Nevada wilderness cascade near timberline

Cascade And Peaks, Morning. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Peaks lit by early morning light rirse above a Sierra Nevada wilderness cascade near timberline.

The daily routine on these backcountry photographic expeditions tends to follow a basic pattern. We’re up very early — in order to be in a good place by the time the light arrives we typically need to arise when it is still dark out and then make our way to our chosen location. There’s often an intense period of photography right around sunrise, but then things taper off as the rate of change in the light slows. We work for a couple of hours until the light becomes less spectacular, then we return to camp for breakfast followed by a midday period of mostly hanging out. We usually eat dinner in the late afternoon time frame, and then we head out once again for a few hours of photography that often end in darkness.

On this morning I had a plan to walk up a nearby route to a higher lake, where I had several potential photographs in mind. I knew that these scenes were very light dependent, so I wanted to arrive early. I set out with plenty of time… and immediately started to find myself distracted by unanticipated subjects. I stopped to photograph the inlet stream of a lake, then a pool below the trail, then this lovely section of a small creek cascading down the slope from the valley above.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Last Light And Sunset Clouds

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Last Light And Sunset Clouds
Colorful sunset clouds as the last light touches the summits of the Sierra Nevada crest

Last Light And Sunset Clouds. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful sunset clouds as the last light touches the summits of the Sierra Nevada crest.

I think of this as the “night of miracle light.” Sierra Nevada folks know that the predominant condition in the summer months is clear, blue skies… which many people regard as a virtue but which photographers often lament. It probably seems very strange to non-photographers to hear us exclaim things like, “Darn! I had seven days of boring perfect blue skies!” We want some clouds! The come from time to time, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

During our weeklong stay in the Eastern Sierra high country we also had mostly blue sky weather. We did get a bit of rain on the day we hiked in and, surprisingly, again on the day we hiked out. But in between, with one notable exception, the weather was what normal people might call “perfect.” But then, there was this evening, the final one of the trip. Very late in the day, we began to see lovely, puffy clouds starting to assemble above our valley and especially above the higher peaks the surrounded the upper end at the Sierra crest. At sunset the clouds became spectacularly beautiful as they were illuminated by sunset light coming from below and to the west. All of us stopped what we were doing and assembled in a group near our camp to watch this lovely luminous benediction to our trip.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline*

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Reflections, Rocky Shoreline
“Reflections, Rocky Shoreline” — Huge rocky slabs meet the shoreline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

* This is the second of two photographs that I’m posting for an unusual reason — after the original post I rethought the aspect ratio of the photograph and decided that I like it in the (unusual for me!) square format. The text below is the same as that used in the original post.

A group of us recently spent a week camped at 11,000′ in a landscape of water, glaciated rocks, meadows, and high peaks. AS the week went on we gradually pushed out the boundaries of our photographic explorations. My first view of this formation was on my initial scouting trip to this lake — I did not photograph it on that visit, but I made a mental note to return when the light would be more ideal. In this case, “ideal” meant “not in full sun,” so my plan was to come back in the early morning and evening hours. Early morning turned out to be best since the air was still at that hour, leaving the water still enough to produce coherent reflections.

I returned a few mornings later. Demonstrating once again the importance of what I might term “attentive serendipity” in photography, even though I got distracted and arrived at the lake later than planned, the timing turned out to be nearly perfect. I had a few minutes to photograph the larger landscape in the pre-sunlight “quiet light” before moving on to photograph this still-shaded scene. And once I finished here, the sunlight cooperated by arriving at a nearby rocky peninsula and both backlighting a tree and turning the water a lovely deep blue color.

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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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