Tag Archives: ledge

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Lake, Submerged Rocks

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Sierra Lake, Submerged Rocks
By the shore of an Eastern Sierra backcountry lake with a ledge of submerged rocks.

Sierra Lake, Submerged Rocks. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

By the shore of an Eastern Sierra backcountry lake with a ledge of submerged rocks.

Recently I have had more than one excuse to go back and revisit photographs from previous years. First, this has been an attractive way to find “new old” work during this time of restrictions on travel. Second, I’m involved in a project (about which I can’t say more at the moment) that required me to spend a lot of time during the past month reviewing photographs from a particular subset of my Sierra Nevada photographs. It has been wonderful to relive a set of wonderful backcountry trips I took since about 2008 and, in the process, “discover” a lot of images that I had somehow left behind.

This is one of those photographs. I’ve often wondered about how it is that certain photographs seem to need to “age” for months or years before they make sense. In this case, I think what happened is that when I considered photographs from this place made on this day that I selected another image, worked my way through it, and then moved on. In essence, this one was “left on the cutting room floor” during that editing process. The scene is a high country lake — which lake hardly matters — where rocks under shallow, shoreline water contrast with the intense aqua color of the deeper water.

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

Trees, Ledge, Fractured Rock

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Trees, Ledge, Fractured Rock
Two trees grow tenaciously on a narrow ledge above a fractured cliff face.

Trees, Ledge, Fractured Rock. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two trees grow tenaciously on a narrow ledge above a fractured cliff face.

Nearly a decade ago I joined a group of friends and photographers at a Yosemite backcountry location. I was only there a few days, but they stayed for over a week — including a bout of incredibly cold early autumn weather than I managed to miss. (Although I wan’t there to experience it, I have heard the stories many times on subsequent backcountry trips with these folks.)

We were camped in a scenic location within in walking distance of a remarkable range things to see and photograph — lakes, meadows, ridges, granite slabs and ones, forest, and more. But I made this photograph only a few feet from camp, where low, fractured cliffs began to climb near the edge fo the lake and meadows. Like anyone who spends time there, I’ve long been fascinated by the relationship between Sierra trees and rock. Some trees, especially those growing in the rock, manage to eke our a life in little more than cracks in the granite and, in doing so, they sometimes seem closer to rock than to living things.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Tree, Red Rock Ledge

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Tree, Red Rock Ledge
A tree grows at the apex of a sandstone ledge, Zion National Park.

Tree, Red Rock Ledge. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tree grows at the apex of a sandstone ledge, Zion National Park.

I recall composing the photograph and making several versions of it as I thought about where to position the tree at the apex of the ledge, a question made a bit complicated by some of the subjects surrounding the main focus and by the need to have the camera pointing upwards rather steeply. Shortly after this visit to Zion National Park I shared one or two early version of the scene, one in portrait and one in landscape orientation, if I recall correctly.

The compositional questions remaining in the back of my mind, however. When I came back to the original files recently I decided to work a bit with a different image from among the original group. As I worked it started to seem that it might be good to try a crop that I had not considered originally, one that took out some extraneous material. (A big part of editing is determining how much you can remove!)

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 and Amazon.

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.

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

Monolith, Trees, Snowy Ledge

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Monolith, Trees, Snowy Ledge
A band of resilient trees growing on a snow-covered ledge at the base of a granite monolith

Monolith, Trees, Snowy Ledge. Yosemite National Park, California. February 25, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A band of resilient trees growing on a snow-covered ledge at the base of a granite monolith

By the time this photograph appears at my website and on social media, the snow at the base of this famous monolith should be long gone — having melted, flowed down in rivulets to join the rushing Merced River, crossed into California’s Central Valley, perhaps reached the San Francisco Bay, and even made it out into the Pacific Ocean.

These trees, growing on a narrow ledge at the base of one of Yosemite’s most famous and visible granite faces, always draw my attention. Their location is impressive, but so is the fact that they have managed to grow relatively straight and tall while located in a world of rock, most of which came from (and continues to come from!) weathering of the giant monolith above. Winter snows highlight their dark forms more clearly.

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 and Amazon.
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