Tag Archives: landscape

Clearing Sierra Nevada Sunset Clouds

July 9, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Last sunset light on clearing storm clouds above the Sierra Nevada, photographed from a commercial airline flight

We spent the past week in New York City, visiting family and hanging out and doing some photography. (More urban/street photography from the visit will be coming soon.) Our final day there started out with driving rain, but cleared it up in time for us to make our way to the Newark airport for our flight back to California. There were rumors that the storm front passing over the east coast might interfere with our flight, but we were airborne only a few minutes later than scheduled, though the pilot came on the address system to let us know that they had been given a much more southerly route to follow, due to storms further north, and that this might delay our expected 8:45 PM arrival by about 15 minutes or so.

Most people might regard that as a minor inconvenience, but I quickly calculated that this would probably put us right above the Sierra Nevada almost exactly at sunset, possibly providing some interesting opportunities for aerial landscape photography. An hour or so before landing the pilot again came on the system to announce that storms above the Sierra might call create some turbulence. Again, I thought that sounded fine as long as that meant great clouds. There must have been monsoon conditions, as there were already thick clouds well east of the range, and before long I could see a wall of very high storm clouds stretching along the length of the Sierra ahead of us. In fact, the clouds were high enough that they blocked the sun, and I began to doubt that anything photographically interesting would occur. Apparently the crew was looking for an opening through the clouds, since they soon turned a bit to the left/south, and I could see an opening ahead with colorful backlit clouds. As we passed to the south of the cloud wall — and I never could figure out exactly where we were above the range — the last light of the setting sun passed almost horizontally over these thinning clouds, producing brilliant colors and allowing a brief view of snow on the mountains below.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Juniper Forest and a Wash

July 6, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Juniper trees on red rock soil next to a shallow canyon

My recollection of this afternoon is that we set out down the west side of the park without a particular plan in mind. Eventually we photographed in a deep canyon with tall sandstone walls, but at times we were challenged by trying to find interesting subjects. The light was harsh, but it was also interrupted in awkward ways by clouds — occasionally producing interesting patterns of light and shade, but also sometimes killing the interesting light.

In this area the land slopes down from west to east, following the contours of the underlying strata. For this reason, well before the end of the day the light is already coming across this gently rising terrain at a low angle relative to its incline. Here that light is sweeping across a landscape of red rock, juniper trees, and the beginnings of a small red rock canyon.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

July 4, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An eastern Sierra grove of slender aspens with a hint of fall color remaining

There are interesting subtleties to the autumn transition of aspen color in the eastern Sierra. Unlike forests in some other areas, where the trees are more similar across wide areas, and thus tend to change colors at the same time, in the Sierra the color change has many variations of region, climate, moisture, and elevation. It is quite possible to arrive at a grove to find that almost all of the leaves have fallen… only to visit another grove not too far away where the color change is still getting underway.

This is a somewhat unusual little grove. The trees are very slender and crowded closely tighter. They are also, generally, smaller than those in the more-or-less typical Sierra aspen grove, where trees may be larger but also tend to be bent and even misshapen. These slender trees stand tall and straight, and at the time I made the photograph they had lost nearly all of their leaves, leaving a somewhat ghostly forest of bare trunks.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Juniper and Striped Sandstone

July 2, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A vertically striped sandstone cliff behind a juniper tree

My recollection is that we had driven into this deep canyon at Capitol Reef late in the day, and that we stopped to photograph as we began to head back out of the canyon not long before sunset. Because of the late hour, although it was still daytime, the light was blocked here by the very tall walls of this narrow canyon.

We stopped here largely because of the remarkable vertical stains on the smooth sandstone walls. In many places this layer of sandstone is almost monolithic, but here the staining produced sharp vertical lines and broke up the otherwise solid features of the rock. Near the base of the cliff a few boulders stood, and on the higher areas right next to the cliff a few trees managed to grow.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: landscape

Clearing Sierra Nevada Sunset Clouds

Juniper Forest and a Wash

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

Juniper and Striped Sandstone

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