Tag Archives: landscape

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Lupine and Fog

August 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring lupine blossoms grow on fog-shrouded slopes of Mission Peak above Fremont, California.

While doing a major review of the past half-dozen years of raw files this week I have come across quite a few photographs that I had more or less forgotten. (I’ve also deleted a lot of old raw files, but that is a different story.) While I had forgotten this photograph, I remember the day I took it quite well and the memory of the photograph came back as soon as I found it.

Mission Peak is more than 2000′ feet above the Mission San Jose (part of Fremont) area of the San Francisco Bay Area, in the East Bay a bit north of San Jose. The peak is a very popular hiking location due to its proximity to urban areas, its quick access to near-wilderness, and the fact the summit provides a spectacular view of the southern parts of the San Francisco Bay, ranging from the South Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains all the way up to San Francisco and, on clear days, beyond. On this day it was not clear, at least not at the start of the hike – it was extremely foggy, quite wet, and rather cold. But anyone who photographs flowers much knows that soft and diffused light can be your friend, and this fog certainly provided that light. The fog-obscured hills beyond are covered in the intense green (what I call the “impossible green”) of the California grasslands in spring.

By the way, I recall that as I continued on up the trail past these flowers and approached the summit of the peak I emerged above the fog bank to find hillsides carpeted with more lupine and with California golden poppy flowers.

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Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: White Mountains

Owens Valley Sky

August 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dramatic thunderstorms begin to build above Owens Valley, flanked by the White Mountains and the eastern Sierra Nevada range.

If there is any good news about starting to run out of space on my hard drive, it might be that it encourages me to begin the process of reviewing my tens of thousands of archived raw image files, and that leads me to look through files that I haven’t revisited in a long time – and during this process I find photographs that I had forgotten about. Not only is it worthwhile to rediscover these photographs that ended up buried in the archive, but it is also a chance to recall some of the trips on which the photographs were made.

This photograph is yet another (of many!) that wouldn’t have happened at all if it were not for a whole unpredictable series of events and circumstances. I’ll make the story as short as I can, but it is still a bit involved. Almost every summer I share a long pack trip with a group of my friends. In 2005 we had come up with a 14-day trip along a good portion of the John Muir Trail between roughly the Ediza Lake area and Bishop Pass, which included one of the very few sections of the JMT that I had not hiked. We started at Agnew Meadow, headed up past Shadow Lake, turned south on the JMT, stopped at Reds Meadow, continued on to the Duck and Purple Lakes area… where I started to feel like I might be coming down with some sort of bug. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I decided that the prudent thing was to bail out of the trip and exit to Mammoth Lakes since the idea of getting sick on the fourth day of a 14-day hike with a large group was not appealing.

So I hiked out. Ironically, once I crossed the pass to head down to the Mammoth area, I recovered – but it was now too late to rejoin my group since they would be two days ahead of me on the trail at this point. Since I was back at my car now and feeling just fine I figured that I might as well do something else before heading home, so I decided to drive up into the White Mountains and visit the Bristlecone Pine forest. On the way back down from the Whites I just happened to pull out at this spot where the high desert terrain was extra green around a creek, on an afternoon when monsoon conditions were leading to a buildup of afternoon clouds above the Sierra, the Whites, and Owens Valley between the two ranges.

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

Boulders, Shoreline Reflections

August 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Granite boulders lie in shallow waters of a sub-alpine lake reflecting shoreline trees, Yosemite National Park.

This quiet little lake lies unobtrusively just off of highway 120 across the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park. I’ve posted a few photographs from here before and noted that, as far as I know, the lake doesn’t even have an official name. There is just a small parking loop where you can pull out and then wander down to the lake, typically in complete solitude.

The light is a bit tricky here since the lake is in a depression where ridges to the east block the morning light. However, the wonderful rocks scattered along the shoreline make up for this! I made this photograph, and several others in the sequence, by shooting with a long lens from the other side of the lake. The low camera angle and still water created some very interesting reflections above the barely visible underwater logs and rocks.

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

Pond with Boulders and Trees

August 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A small pond reflects trees and glaciated boulders, Yosemite National Park.

This is a little location that I’ve returned to since I first discovered it a few years ago when I made a random stop along Tioga Pass Road to photograph some fog, looked away from the road, and saw a faint trail leading off into a little valley that looked to be full of rocks. Later I returned and wandered out on the trail and discovered a surprising landscape with glaciated granite, small pools, open forest, and small meadows. The first time I photographed there I had little time, so it ended up being more of a scouting visit than a shoot. However, this summer I planned to reserve part of a morning to wander back up this trail during the time when the light would still be good.

The pools here are almost completely still. The water is flowing, but not much, especially in the small granite rimmed pools like this one. The light was just barely beginning to filter down through the trees, so I had to be a bit careful to avoid hot spots where the sun shone. I’d share where this spot is, except that if you think about what you are passing as you drive along Tioga Pass Road, and occasionally stop and look around, you can probably find your own little spots like this one.

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