Tag Archives: last

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

Owens Valley Trees, Sierra Nevada, Evening

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Owens Valley Trees, Sierra Nevada, Evening
The last light of an autumn day falls across a group of trees in Owens Valley with the Sierra Nevada in the background.

Owens Valley Trees, Sierra Nevada, Evening. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last light of an autumn day falls across a group of trees in Owens Valley with the Sierra Nevada in the background.

Landscape photography often feels a bit like hunting to me. I may go to a particular location with a general sense that something worthwhile is likely to happen there — and that sense is often based on some combination of long-developed intuition and knowledge of the antecedent conditions and the current situation. But I often do not have a specific subject or composition in mind. (Sometimes I do, but that is less likely.) In other words, I believe that there is a good chance that I’ll find the sort of thing that appeals to me photographically… so I go to a place at a time because I think the odds are good I’ll find something interesting.

One result is that I have to be ready to discover, change plans, improvise, and respond quickly to whatever I discover. (It also means that there are occasional dead-ends, but I digress…) We went to this spot with something entirely different in mind, but within minutes of arriving I decided that the “something else” was not going to work… and I saw that the line of sunlight coming across Owens Valley was striking this group of trees and that I only had a moment or two to photograph before the light left them. I made an initial exposure in landscape mode, then switched to portrait mode when I noticed more light on the foreground than the background. In the end, I came away with two rather different photographs of these trees — in the landscape version they lie near the bottom of the frame with only more distance subjects above them, while here they are situated beyond the stretch of foreground plants and the distant peaks occupy less of the frame.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

The Last Leaves

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The Last Leaves
An aspen tree with a few remaining autum leaves, against a cliff face wtih snow.

The Last Leaves. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen trees with a few remaining autumn leaves, against a cliff face with snow.

The Sierra Nevada experience of the past year-and-a-half or so has been… strange. Everything has changed since our world was turned upside down in March of 2020, and my ability to visit and photograph my favorite mountain range has not been an exception. During the first summer we saw many locations simply shut down, and I didn’t really get into the Sierra until the very end of that summer — but only for very brief visits and one aborted pack trip that I had to cancel as a result of the intense wildfire smoke. By last winter I was again able to more comfortably get to non-Sierra locations including Death Valley, where it was possible to work in relative isolation, but the Sierra remained difficult to access. I got up there a few times later in the season, but it wasn’t until this fall that I felt that I was beginning to reconnect with this landscape.

In mid-October we put together an actual road trip. It began with a couple of nights in the Eastern Sierra before continuing on to Southwest Utah, another location that I hadn’t been to in far too long. This brief autumn Sierra visit (which followed another visit a week earlier) was a bit later than usual, and we ended up visiting a few places that I usually overlook… and heading to a few “old friends” even though they were past their prime. I made this photograph in one of those places, a location where the colors are usually spectacular a bit earlier in the season. I knew that wouldn’t be the case this time, so we went there a bit later in the day after photographing more promising morning subjects. We arrived, made a quick stop, and I spotted this small group of trees in the shadow of a cliff. They were nearly at the end of their color transition and most of the leaves were gone, but those that remained glowed in the bit of light arriving over the top of the cliff.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dome, Last Light

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Dome, Last Light
The last light of the day glows on a granite dome in the Yosemite backcountry wilderness.

Dome, Last Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last light of the day glows on a granite dome in the Yosemite backcountry wilderness.

If your experience with the natural world comes largely from watching media about the experiences of those who travel there… it is possible that your perception is skewed in ways that do not quite correspond to reality. Based on what you’ll sometimes see, you could end up thinking that the wilderness is a wild, thrill-a-minute place full of dangerous animals, daring hikes along edges of cliffs and more — all with exciting, bigger-than-life narration and dramatic musical accompaniment. I admit to occasionally falling (happily) for such illusions, but the reality is a lot different. Most of the time little happens. It is quiet. You are alone with your thoughts. There is time and space to just ponder.

The end of a backcountry day is often such a time, and when it comes — The end of a backcountry day is often such a time, and when it comes — as this scene does — from the end of a backcountry season, it can be even quieter and meditative. As a photographer, the last few hours of the day are often busy times as we “work the light” before it is gone. But inevitably, the light eventually fades, and I’m often left standing quietly and just… looking.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Last Light, Mono Lake

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Last Light, Mono Light
The shoreline of Mono Lake, a cone, mountains, and the last light of an early Autumn evening.

Last Light, Mono Lake. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The shoreline of Mono Lake, a cone, mountains, and the last light of an early Autumn evening.

The views from this section of Mono Lake have long intrigued me. I think it may be because I frequently arrive here late in the day from the north, and especially in the autumn it is pretty common for me to come down the grade from Conway Summit at just about sunset. On quite a few occasions I’ve raced the sunset to get there in time for the last light, occasionally with the rising full moon in the scene. By now I have a few particular locations where I like to pull over and set up on these lovely evenings.

This view looks along the shore of the upper “corner” of the lake just off of US 395. The shoreline undulates here now that the waterline has dropped from historic levels. (I’m fairly sure that the foreground peninsula was previously under water.) A second peninsula extends into the lake from the Black Point formation, and beyond that lies Negit Island. In the distance, beyond the far shore of this huge lake, lie desert mountains, catching the final sunlight of the day in this photograph.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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