Tag Archives: lodgepole

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

Pywiack Dome, Tenaya Creek in Flood

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Pywiack Dome, Tenaya Creek in Flood
Pywiack Dome, Tenaya Creek in Flood

Pywiack Dome, Tenaya Creek in Flood. Yosemite National Park, California. June 19, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pywiack Dome towers above Tenaya Creek as it floods surrounding meadows with spring snow melt, Yosemite National Park.

This little spot between Pywiack Dome and Tenaya Lake has interested me for some time. Driving past, I’ve been intrigued by the dome itself (of course!) but also by the small meadow below it where Tenaya Creek winds through a mixture of forest and meadow, and from which the outlet of Cathedral Lake is visible if you know just where to look. In the past, I’ve wandered about in this meadow a bit, trying to photograph lush growth of corn lily plants early in the season.

On this visit, as I drove by on the first day, I was struck by the amount of water flowing here – what I’m used to seeing as a meadow with a stream winding through it was filled from edge to edge with rushing water from snowmelt-swollen Tenaya Creek. I made a mental note to try to come back here the following morning when I thought that light might be interesting. And that’s just what I did on the second day of this visit during the weekend when the pass opened.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Alpenglow, Mammoth Peak

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Alpenglow, Mammoth Peak
Alpenglow, Mammoth Peak

Alpenglow, Mammoth Peak. Yosemite National Park, California. July 22, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Alpenglow lights the face of Mammoth Peak beyond a small tarn near the summit of Tioga Pass, Yosemite National Park.

This was very close to the last exposure I made on this productive late-July day last year. After photographing for a few hours in the vicinity of Tioga Pass, I ended up right at the pass as the day came to an end. Braving hordes of mosquitos – comes with the territory! – I worked the area around the pass itself, building compositions out of juxtapositions of the water in the small meltwater ponds, shoreline meadow and boulders, grasses growing along the edge of the water, the surrounding pine forests, and the more distant peaks of Kuna Crest. In this photograph, what is very nearly the very last direct light of the day is bathing the slopes of Mammoth Peak, which still had a fair amount of snow on its flanks even in late July.

This scene posed a few technical challenges. First, there is obviously a great distance between the foreground granite boulder and the very distance mountain. I wanted the foreground to be in optimal sharpness, so I used a relatively small aperture to maintain sufficient sharpness on the far ridge. There was also a fairly large dynamic range in the scene, ranging from soft but direct light on the snow fields of the peak to the dark areas within the forest on the other side of the pond. I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to handle the full dynamic range in one exposure, so I made three – one longer exposure to get a bit more light from the shadows and another shorter one on the dark side to avoid blowing out the brighter areas of the sky. In post, I discovered that there was enough detail in the shadows that I could get everything I needed from a single exposure, though I had to do some work with curves to get create an image the conforms more closely to the way I saw the scene at the time.

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

Lodgepole Pine, Evening Shadows

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Lodgepole Pine, Evening Shadows
Lodgepole Pine, Evening Shadows

Lodgepole Pine, Evening Shadows. Yosemite National Park, California. July 22, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The evening shadow cast by a nearby high ridge approaches a lone lodgepole pine and an old snag near Tioga Pass, Yosemite National Park.

One of my favorite kinds of light is that found at the edges of shadows from higher peaks as they move across lower terrain. (A secret: Among other “tricks,” I like to find and follow these margins when I shoot in Yosemite Valley, too.) Because this light most often happens during the relatively early and late hours of the day, the color quality of the light tends to be warm and the angle low. As the patterns of light and shadow move across the landscape, individual elements may get picked out the light and can often be isolated against darker backgrounds, as in this photograph.

The Sierra is full of trees pretty much like this one, and such meadows with the isolated small and large trees and scattered boulders are not hard to find. This particular tree is in one of the extensive meadow areas in the general area of Tioga Pass. The photograph was made in the very late afternoon as the tall ridge to the west was blocking the sun.

Despite the still and tranquil nature of the scene, this is an example of a sort of shot that reveals the wrongness of the idea that all landscape is done slowly and methodically and with all the time in the world to work. Sometimes that is the case, but when you work the margins of shadows (or many similar dynamic subjects) there may only be brief seconds when the light is where you want it. An observer might find it humorous to watch the photographer run to get into position and then work very quickly.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Morning, Shoreline of Lower Young Lake

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Morning, Shoreline of Lower Young Lake
Morning, Shoreline of Lower Young Lake

Morning, Shoreline of Lower Young Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 14, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning sunlight shines through the edge of the forest along the rocky shoreline of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

When I got up on this late-summer morning at Lower Young Lake, my first goal was to walk around the end of the lake and into the forested area shown along the shoreline in this photograph – but as I reached the lake near my camp I decided to first photograph the shoreline forest and trees from a bit further back. There are, as is probably apparent, several layers to this scene: the reflecting surface of the water with logs and other things below the surface and seen through the reflections, the rocks along the shoreline, behind that the edge of the forest interspersed with a few more boulders and bits of sunlit meadow, and far beyond the rocky face of the ridge that rises behind the lake.

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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