Tag Archives: ledge

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

Horsetail Fall, Sunset (#2)

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Horsetail Fall
Horsetail Fall

Horsetail Fall, Sunset (#2). Yosemite National Park, California. February 15, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Horsetail Fall in the final sunset light on a mid-February evening, Yosemite Valley, California.

I was in Yosemite Valley for a couple of days during the middle of February. My main reason for going was not to photograph the seasonal and iconic sunset light on Horsetail Fall, but it turned out that I did just that – twice. Since I have photographed the phenomenon in the past and already have a photograph that I consider a success, shooting it again isn’t at the top of my to-do list. However, I’ll shoot an icon if I think that the conditions might be special. In the afternoon I had been up high enough to get a clear view to the west, and it had looked almost completely clear. This is pretty much a necessary condition for good light on Horsetail, since the very late and low-angle light has to come in from across the Central Valley unobstructed. And, as everyone knows by now, the fall is an intermittent and seasonal event that depends on the right combination of prior snow (or rain) and warm weather to get the creek feeding the fall running in the middle of winter. It turned out that this had also happened, and the fall was running pretty strongly.

So, with all of those pieces apparently in play I decided to head on over to the picnic area beneath El Cap and then wander east until I found a suitable viewpoint. Still a bit ambivalent about shooting Horsetail, one reason I chose this spot is that it allowed me to shoot other subjects in the late afternoon and then arrive more or less at the last moment (around 5:00 p.m.) and still find parking and a spot to shoot. The parking, especially, can be more problematic at the other popular location, located along Southside Drive.

In the end, it was an odd evening for Horsetail. As the sunset continued the fall began to glow, and it looked like it might possibly turn out to be a really special night to shoot this subject. But then a few minutes before the peak of color would have occurred… it was as if someone switched the lights off. Very quickly the color dimmed to much more muted shades and remained so as the light faded. This was my last shot before that turn of events occurred, and this color corrected version (compensating for the otherwise very blue light on the rock face not struck by the sunlight) picked up some nice light and some of the most delicate and beautiful spray I’ve seen on the fall.

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.

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keywords: yosemite, national, park, valley, california, usa, north america, nature, winter, landscape, cliff, water, fall, waterfall, creek, el capitan, ledge, crack, tree, skyline, ridge, buttress, mist, spray, horsetail, fire, evening, sunset, light, travel, scenic, mountain, sierra, nevada, range, winter, february, shadow, stock

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

Detail, Last Light on El Capitan

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Detail, Last Light on El Capitan


Detail, Last Light on El Capitan. Yosemite Valley, California. October 31, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail view of last sunset light on the face of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California.

Recently I wrote about (and confessed to occasionally) photographing icons. You cannot succumb more openly to “icon photography” than by creating a sunset photograph of El Capitan as seen from Wawona Tunnel view – but that is exactly what this is.

I had not originally intended to photograph here, but as I often do, I drove by and stopped on my way to look for another subject. When I arrived I got out of the car and walked to the overlook without my equipment, as I often do, just to take a look at the stupendous view – worth doing whether or not you decide to photograph it. Most of the time I simply enjoy the view and then get back in the car and move on. However, on this evening I noticed some things about the conditions that forced me to consider the possibility that it might be “special” enough to stick around and haul out the camera and tripod. The air was quite clear, but even more potentially interesting, I could see a few low clouds to the west and the sky in that direction looked a bit hazy – both conditions can create intense color at sunset. (If I could have ordered up revisions to the existing scene, I might have requested a few interesting clouds floating around the face of El Cap, but no one seemed interested in taking my order!)

Rather than shooting the usual “valley view” – it takes Really Super Extra Amazing Special Conditions for me to “go there” – I put my longest lens on the camera and decided to “work” details of the scene, particularly looking for boundary areas and interesting shapes and forms. By boundary areas I refer to to beautiful and interesting spots where different things are juxtaposed – a shadow and bright illumination, a soft shape or texture and a harder one, a closer subject and one farther away. As the light evolved this pattern of brilliantly illuminated cliff faces separated by a slightly curving shadow and underlined by the rising shadow emerged.

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.

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

Detail, Last Light on El Capitan

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Detail, Last Light on El Capitan

Detail, Last Light on El Capitan. Yosemite National Park, California. October 31, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail view of last sunset light on the face of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California.

Shot from a very famous and popular location, this is a long lens view of the face of El Capitan close to sunset when the light is almsot but not quite directly from behind my position, and when the shadows of the lower mountains to the west begin to rise up the face of the mountain. There is a color version of this photograph also, but the effect is very different. And this one reminds me in a vague way of a certain famous photograph of another Yosemite landmark.

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.

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

Granite Cliff and Ledge – Upper Cathedral Lake

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Granite Cliff and Ledge - Upper Cathedral Lake

Granite Cliff and Ledge – Upper Cathedral Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 26, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fractured cliff face and bench with colorful lichens and trees near Upper Cathedral Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

During the last week of September I managed to squeeze in a very shot pack trip to Upper Cathedral Lakes, just out of Tuolumne Meadows in the Yosemite National Park high country, where I met five outstanding Yosemite photographers who were there for a week of shooting. Although I was only at the lake for perhaps 24 hours, I tried to make the best of it and I shot early and late all around the upper lake.

On the first evening I decided to explore some rocky gullies ascending above the lake on the side opposite from Cathedral Peak. The first gully I followed was very narrow and quite deep – I had to climb a good distance to finally find a spot where I could climb out of it onto the glacier-smoother dome-like formations above the lake. This photograph shows a tremendously fractured section of the wall of this gully, with the bases of a few trees included for scale.

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

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