Tag Archives: landscape

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Fall Color, River Canyon

March 18, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cottonwood trees and other fall color along the bottom of a river canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

I made this photograph a few years back on a beautiful autumn day when a small group of friends walked down a river canyon, exploring and photographing the river, the vegetation, and the rocky walls. Direct sunlight does not reach the bottom of these canyons most of the time, especially during the times of the year when the sun’s path is lower in the sky and the daylight hours are shorter. Instead, the light strikes the upper walls, bouncing back and forth, diffusing and picking up the color of rocks and fall leaves as it makes its way downwards. If you look, you can see it in this photograph — in the glow on the canyon wall, the saturated colors of the leaves, and the light making its way into shadows.

Such canyons are wonderful places to go if you want to be cut off from the rest of the world. The landscape above the canyons is often relatively bare, perhaps dry and flat with occasional junipers. But none of that flat land world is visible once you are down in the canyon, where cottonwoods and brush spring up along the creek and every bend promises something new an interesting.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Oaks, Trail, Spring

March 15, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Old oak trees along a Northern California trail through spring grasslands

When people think of the landscape of California, many think of impressive and famous subjects: the redwoods, the Pacific Ocean coast, the High Sierra, perhaps the deserts. But those of us who live here know that one of the most characteristics is that of the oak grasslands. The sprawl along the low hills found all over the state and manage to climb up into mountains in many places — on both sides of the Central Valley, along the coastal hills, and more.

This tree and I go back perhaps twenty years, to when I first “discovered” this park just south of the main population centers of the San Francisco Bay Area. The specific location isn’t really important to anyone else, since you can find similar landscapes in many other places. But this tree is special to me. It sits along a trail that I have hiked many times, a steep but short one that takes me to the top of a bare hill and then down into a valley from which more distant trails branch out. I’ve photographed this sprawling oak throughout the year — summer, fall, winter and spring, in rain and fog and heat. This time I photographed on a late-winter California day that, as they sometimes do, felt more like spring.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Oaks, Spring

March 13, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring green comes to the oak-covered hills of Northern California

After all of these years, I’m still amazed by the arrival of California’s season of “impossible green,” when in late winter the grasses that are so dry and brown for much of the year erupt into a lush green that blankets the hills. When summer visitors express surprise at California’s dry summers, I always want to say, “Come back in March!”

I headed out on this morning for several reasons. First and foremost, I wanted to hike a bit. But I also wanted to do a bit of wildflower reconnaissance. (The quick report: In the place I visited the biggest wildflower show is yet to come.) In addition, I wanted to see what this year’s rainy winter has done to a landscape that has been very, very dry for half of a decade. For the first time in years, there was water everywhere. Water was flowing out of every little valley and alluvial hillsides were sponge-full of water that is leaking out the bottom. After so many dry springs, I think I actually enjoyed having to work my way around ponds of muddy water and occasionally slog right through the mud!

Photographs: Nature

Smoke-Shrouded Hills

March 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke envelops hills east of the Sierra Nevada near Mono Lake

I made this photograph on a special morning that didn’t initially seem all that special. The night before I had driven down into Lee Vining Canyon after dark, and I could see the glow of a new wildfire to the southeast. In the morning I left my camp in the canyon and headed east to see what I could see. I found a high overlook and soon saw a giant plume of rising smoke to the south and tendrils of smoke drifting north toward and over Mono Lake.

I spent a few minutes photographing the drifting smoke above the lake, but very soon the smoke became too thick. I had to find a location that was on that boundary between too much and too little smoke — enough to partially obscure the details of the landscape, but not so much as to render it invisible. I moved further north to another high elevation locations and photographed back into the Basin. But this point the lower elevations were largely filled with smoke, but here one tree-covered ridge emerges and rises toward the still blue sky.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: landscape

Fall Color, River Canyon

Oaks, Trail, Spring

Oaks, Spring

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