Tag Archives: lichen

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

Reflections, Cathedral Range Granite

September 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Still waters of a lake reflect Cathedral Range granite patterns, Yosemite National Park

This is likely to be the first in a somewhat large group of photographs made during a recent weeklong stay at a backcountry Sierra Nevada lake with friends and fellow photographers Charlie Cramer and Scot Miller. The two of them are part of a larger group of photographers who have photographed annually in the high Sierra, most often in Yosemite, for about the past 15 years. I’m a more recent hanger-on, first tagging along on my own perhaps a half-dozen years ago, and then participating more fully for the past three years or so. The typical plan is to pack in to a scenic backcountry location, set up a base camp, and then photograph the heck out of the area for a week or so. This approach has all kinds of advantages — too many to completely describe them here — including the ability to watch for perfection conditions or to return to a location and refine a vision of the subject over a period of days.

Near the start of the trip I saw this little area where vertical rocks meet water near the edge of a lake. My first photographs were OK, but just OK. However, I knew the spot had potential given the right water and light conditions. I watched the area each time I passed it, always watching for those better conditions. I got them on this day, when the water had become almost completely still, producing a more coherent reflection of the lichen-covered rocks.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Granite, Water, and Tree

January 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree growing in a crack in a granite wall above the reflecting surface of a Sierra Nevada lake, Kings Canyon National Park

I have begun to return to the photographs from the September 2013 9-day backcountry trip into the eastern Sierra of Kings Canyon National Park. Four photographers traveled over two nearly-12,000′ passes to reach a basin full of lakes at 11,000′, where we set up camp and photographed for the better part of a week. By staying in one location we were able to come to know the surrounding wilderness intimately, frequently returning to locations at different times of day and in different weather conditions. Of course, even a week in one valley like this one is not sufficient to truly know it – a lifetime might be necessary for that!

When I return from a shoot like this one I’m always anxious to dig into my photographs and see what I came back with. In the field, while I’m complete focused on each photograph as I make it, I quickly move on to the next thing, and after a week of shooting I certain do not recall every shot. The initial pass through the image files always reveals some photographs that speak to me, and others that seem to have potential. I might work them over for a week or two, but then I tend to put them aside and move on to other things. But I’m not done. Some photographs do not reveal themselves to me as quickly as others, and I’ve learned that when I go back to the original files months or even years later I often “discover” photographs that were there all along, but which somehow escaped my attention. This is one of those, though in this case I think I have some ideas about how it ended up waiting for me to revisit it months later. First, when I made the photograph I knew there was something about these patterns that was photographable – but at the time I recall being a bit challenged by making a composition out of it that did not include some distracting materials above the elements you see here. At the same time, another photograph of a similar subject turned out to be one of those that worked right away, and I think that encouraged me to move on past this one. This week I began to revisit these files and when I saw this one it was almost immediately obvious to me that it would work with his wider crop, which solved the problem of the “distracting materials” that I mentioned above. I like several things about this photograph: its subtle color palette, the strong abstract patterns of cracked rock and green-gray lichen, the very small tree growing in the crack in the rocks.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Bare Tree, Redrock Cliff

December 26, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

A single bare tree stands against a massive sandstone cliff

This photograph had fallen by the wayside in the wake of a 2012 autumn photography trip to Utah with a group of friend. The three of us photographed mostly in various areas of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and also briefly hit Zion on the way to and from the main destinations. As happens all too frequently, after working my way through almost all the photographs from that trip other tasks intruded and I moved on. A week ago one of my shooting partners emailed me to ask if I had a photograph of him that he could use for a newsletter. I recalled that I had one of him set up next to a bit of sandstone wall along the Escalante River, and while looking for it I ended up going back through a set of RAW files shot that day.

Now, over a year later, my specific memory of this photograph is a bit fuzzy. I recall for sure that we spent the day – a cold and windy one – in a big canyon with steep sandstone walls and a meandering stream lined with cottonwood trees and other autumn vegetation, some of which had lost virtually all of its foliage. This tree was one of those almost bare ones, and growing up against the beautiful bit of sandstone cliff its form echoed that of a nearby crack in the rock.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Unclassified, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Maple Tree, Slot Canyon

June 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The red and gold leaves of an autumn maple tree against the lichen-covered and layered sandstone walls of a slot canyon, Zion National Park

When we passed through Zion National Park about a week and a half from the end of October, it was mostly too early for fall color in Zion Canyon, but things were starting to get interesting in the high country along the Mount Carmel Highway, where we spent most of a day looking for and photographing fall color, red rock, canyons, and much more. It seemed to me that the predominant sources of autumn color here were maples, and some of them were quite brilliant.

This tree was growing along a wash at the bottom of a red rock canyon which in places took on the appearance of a slot canyon. Between the tree, with its golden-yellow, oranges, greens, and bits of red, and the cliff, with shades of brown, white, red-orange, and even blue and purple, it is hard to think of very many colors that don’t make an appearance here. I of course liked the colors of this tree, but I also found the water-sculpted steep canyon walls to be interesting, with their folded shapes, lichen, and brighter color where the underlying rock could show through.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: lichen

Reflections, Cathedral Range Granite

Granite, Water, and Tree

Bare Tree, Redrock Cliff

Autumn Maple Tree, Slot Canyon

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