Tag Archives: mccabe

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

Peninsula and Trees, Morning

December 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on a tree-covered peninsula along the edge of a subalpine lake with a talus slope backdrop, Yosemite National Park.

I think that the primary thing that first caught my attention in this little scene was the very twisted and curving tree about 1/3 of the way in from the right edge of the frame. I wonder why one tree ended up growing in such an odd way when its neighbors seem to have managed to grown in a straight and conventional manner? The light on these trees was coming from almost directly behind them, as the sun had just topped the ridge above and out of the frame. Because the talus slope is fairly steep, portions of it remain in shade.

This photograph posed a few interesting challenges, and they are probably not all immediately apparent. One that may be visible to those who are familiar with such scenes is the fact that back-light like this can create some very bright highlights that can “blow out” in a digital camera exposure. In fact, these highlights are what determine the exposure for such a scene. If accommodating the bright highlights makes the shadows too dark, I can either work a bit in post to bring back some shadow detail or I can make a separate exposure for the shadows and blend the two in post. That wasn’t necessary here – I was able to capture the scene in a single exposure. The second odd little problem was that swarms of mosquitos were flying just above the water all around the shoreline of the lake. Although you cannot see them in this small jpg, there were many, many little traces of the bugs in the air – so many, in fact, that I had to somewhat laboriously clone out a good number of the most obvious of them.

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

Shoreline Boulders and Trees, Morning

December 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Bright morning light on boulders and trees along the shoreline of a subalpine lake in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

This is yet another photograph in morning light at this subalpine Sierra Nevada lake where I spent several days in mid-September earlier this year. Like many lakes in this part of the Yosemite back-country, the shoreline is quite rocky, with lots of rocks and boulders left over from the period of glaciation. Here several very large boulders crowd against shoreline trees and plant, and the slopes of the far side of the lake are visible across the water, where trees and plants ascend rock slopes toward a talus field and then a much taller ridge.

These views across alpine Sierra lakes are always compelling. Whenever I camp at such a lake, the area near my campsite becomes my temporary home, and at first the other side of the lake often seems a bit mysterious… until I take the time, often early in the morning or in the evening, to do a circumnavigation of the lake along its shoreline.

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

Boulder and Small Tree

December 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree grows from the side of a boulder near the shoreline of a subalpine back-country lake in Yosemite National Park.

This little tree seems like an impossibility. In a tiny crack in a very large boulder, some distance from the shore in this subalpine lake, it somehow manages to live and seemingly even thrive. It is hard to imagine a more difficult place for a tree to grow. It is also difficult, though interesting, to imagine what this tree might look like if it manages to succeed in the long-term and live for perhaps a hundred years or more. Will it get to the point that its roots begin to grow out of the small crack and spread across more of the rock, and might it form a small pocket of soil that supports other smaller plants?

I made the photograph in the morning, when the light of the early sun was just coming over a ridge above and to the right of the tree. It slanted across the top of the boulder and picked off the upper portion of the tree, leaving its lower truck and the face of the boulder in shade.

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

Rocky Shores, Subalpine Lake

December 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early evening light slants across the rocky shoreline of a sub-alpine back-country lake, Yosemite National Park.

Late in the afternoon on this mid-September day, when the calendar says summer but the surroundings say autumn, we walked cross-country from the lake where we were camped up to the next higher lake in the drainage, following the stream through forest and then sub-alpine meadows to arrive at the outlet of the higher lake in the early evening light. This has been a somewhat unusual year in the Sierra, with late and heavier than normal snowfall, and cool temperatures that maintained the snowpack late into the season, and there were still patches of snow all the way down to the lake’s rocky shoreline. (For scale, if you look really close near the lower right “corner” of the large snow field, you might be able to make out a small spot that is one of my fellow photographers. Hi, Mike!)

I worked this little shoreline clump of rocks to death – I started here shortly after we arrived, and I continued to shoot in more or less this spot until the light faded to the point that we had to start our return hike in order to get back to camp before it was completely dark. This specific spot had a lot to offer, not all of which is visible in this photograph. Along the near shore at my feet there was a little bit of shoreline meadow with grasses, heather, and a few blooming plants and interrupted by these light-colored granite rocks and slabs set at odd angles. Beyond was the water of the lake, transparent and shallow enough that some underwater rocks were visible, and also reflecting the snow, talus fields, and ridges on the far side. I especially like the quality of light at this subtle interval between the “normal” daytime light and the very warm-colored light that comes a bit later. Here the light begins to soften a bit and the color warms slightly, but not so much that the colors are obvious.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mccabe

Peninsula and Trees, Morning

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Shoreline Boulders and Trees, Morning

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Boulder and Small Tree

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Rocky Shores, Subalpine Lake

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.