Tag Archives: landscape

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

Yosemite Fall and Lost Arrow, Fog and Mist

November 2, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Yosemite Fall and Lost Arrow emerge from drifting storm clouds, Yosemite Valley.

When I traveled to Yosemite Valley this past weekend I knew that rain was coming on Saturday – and I was happy about this since I love photographing the Valley in rainy and misty weather. I made a plan to photograph, among other things, what I expected would be cloud and mist floating among the cliffs, trees, and waterfalls of the Valley – and I wasn’t disappointed!

This is a photograph of a Yosemite icon, Upper Yosemite Fall. As clouds drifted across the face near the fall and into the valleys above, from time to time there would be a bit of clearing. Occasionally a clear view of the waterfall would even appear for a moment. At this moment in time, the spire of “Lost Arrow” also appeared along the side of the cliff at the upper right.

This photograph is 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

Grazing Cattle and Aspen Groves, Conway Summit

November 1, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Cattle graze in front of large aspen groves near Conway Summit, California.

Just about anyone who has every photographed aspens in the area around Lee Vining is probably familiar with this location – and I’ve certainly shot there quite a few times. From highway 395 the aspens extend west and up toward the peaks of the Sierra crest, and the at the right hour in the late afternoon the backlight can light up the leaves of the trees. When I visited this time the trees were in transition with some still green, others very colorful, and some almost leafless already. I was also lucky to have some clouds at the end of several cloudless days of photography. (Normal people like perfect blue sky, but photographers are not normal – we tend to like weather!) When I saw the clouds starting to form above the crest early in the afternoon I thought that something interesting might happen later near Conway so I made a point of heading that direction.

This photograph features, of all things, cattle – not my usual subject, perhaps! The area where these aspens grow seems to be at least as much a pasture as it is aspen groves, and I’ve seen cattle grazing in this spot before. (See comments for a note from a member of the family that owns the land.) As the clouds created shadows over the higher slopes in the background, for a moment the sun still hit the foreground trees and these cattle.

This shot also ties in with my recent post on using various focal lengths for landscape photography, in that this photograph was made with what some might regard as an unlikely landscape lens, a 100-400mm zoom! But in this case, this lens at 250mm was just what I needed to more tightly frame the bit of foreground pasture and sunlit trees and compress the distance between them and the shadowed hills beyond.

This photograph is 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

Slender Aspens, Bishop Creek

October 31, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Slender aspen trunks and intense yellow leaves along the south fork of Bishop Creek.

I found these beautiful white-trunk trees growing in a long row alongside one of the forks of Bishop Creek in the early evening. I had been in this area before to shoot different subjects nearby, but these trees had not been colorful on that occasion so I had pretty much ignored them.

There are things I like about this photo, such as the light color and parallel lines of the tree trunks and the bits of leaves and plants below them, but I have some ideas about how I would like to shoot this scene differently next time. So I’m going to count it as a sort of scouting report shot and try to return to this spot next season.

This photograph is 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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Shoreline Plants and Sandstone, Weston Cove

October 30, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Plants grow in cracks in the sandstone along the shore of Weston Cove, Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

On this visit to Point Lobos, a place I photograph frequently, I wasn’t quite sure what conditions I would encounter. A Pacific weather front was approaching and I thought that I might encounter dismal, overcast conditions – but I was surprised to find it mostly sunny when I arrived. Even better, high, thin clouds were approaching the coast line and soon muted the direct sunlight, which made photographing these shoreline rock formations a more reasonable possibility during the late morning.

I’m pretty familiar with Point Lobos in general at this point, having visited the place from the time I was a child. I’m especially familiar with Weston Beach (or “cove,” as I like to think of it), with its circular shape, protective rock barrier, angled sandstone edges, and large pebbly “sand.” But as familiar as I am with this location, I almost alway find something new if I look around carefully enough, and these plants growing in the angular cracks in the sandstone were new to me.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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