Tag Archives: mist

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

Horsetail Fall

March 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Horsetail Fall in afternoon light, Yosemite Valley

As you may already know, Yosemite Valley’s Horsetail Fall draws visitors and especially photographers ever winter, roughly during the last half of February or so. During this period a miraculous conjunction of sunset light, a gap in the ridges to the west, and a wispy waterfall dropping over the edge of El Capitan may produce a momentary “natural firewall” for those positioned to the east of the waterfall. The sight is quite something… but in some ways it is almost more amazing to encounter hundreds of people who have traveled great distances to stand in cold or even snowy meadows to gaze upwards in hopes of seeing this ephemeral light.

I have photographed it in the past so I generally do not photograph it any more. In fact, I like to joke that one of the nice things about Horsetail Fall is that it clears the rest of the Valley of photographers in the evening! ;-) I must have confused at least a few people when I was there on the first day of March, at a time when people are still hoping to catch the phenomenon. We pulled into one of the two popular areas for viewing the fall, but in the late afternoon, well before the light was even hinting at what it could do later on. I looked up at the cliff high above and saw that recent rains had brought the fall to life, and that winds across the upper face of El Capitan were blowing the fall too and fro and carrying its wispy spray in all directions. The rock face was uniformly damp, and the late afternoon light was bright and silvery on the rock. I put a long lens on the camera and pointed it up toward this bright subject and made a few exposures as the wind whipped the falling water back and forth. Then I packed up and left… just as the evening throng of photographers was arriving and finding their positions to photograph what they hoped would be colorful sunset light.

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

Winter Fog, Waterfall, and Trees

March 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Fog rises from Yosemite Valley to obscure the view of forest and waterfall

There is so much to write about this photograph – about the place itself, about what happened on this morning and at this moment, about the feeling of this subject, about the idea of making a photograph with so little detail, and even about some technical stuff. However, I’ll try to keep this relatively short… for now.

I made this photograph on the morning after the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit in The Valley. Because of this event, there were quite a few photographers in the Valley, including a number of friends, and it seemed like most everyone planned to be out early on this morning to make photographs. My morning plans are often a bit vague – sometimes as vague as “I’ll get up early and see if there is any winter fog around” – and that was the case this day. It was overcast, but I thought that it was possible that either some light might appear from the east or that there might be mist and fog cloaking the upper ridges around the Valley. In any case, we eventually ended up a the famous (or infamous, depending upon your point of view! ;-) Tunnel View, where others we knew were already set up. A favorite winter subject in the Valley is the fog, whether it is seen close up as it floats in front of you in one of the meadows or seen from above from a high point such as Tunnel View. I put a long lens on my camera and began to focus mostly on the fog among the trees on the Valley floor.

This fog almost seems like a living thing, constantly in motion and evolving in unexpected ways. One moment there may be little of it, but within moments it thickens and drifts into view. Or it may drift unexpectedly into the Valley from behind you. It rises up the cliff faces, momentarily obscures and then reveals features, and sloshes back and forth across the Valley. For the most part on this morning it seemed to be drifting among the forest trees, occasionally filling nearly the whole floor of the Valley. As we photographed, the fog moved in our direction along the Valley floor, and then suddenly but silently rose to cover our position, its cold and damp body momentarily limiting our view to a few feet in front of us. I turned my attention, and my camera, downwards toward the trees immediately below the overlook since they were still somewhat visible, and as the fog began to thin once again Bridal Veil falls became momentarily visible once again above the soft edge of the fog.

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

Last Light on Snow, Fog, and Granite

March 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees, fog, and snow on the granite summit of El Capitan glow in a final beam of sunset light.

Near the beginning of March I was in Yosemite Valley for three days in conjunction with the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit. (One of my photographs is in the show.) It was a wonderful weekend in many ways. Lots of artists of all sorts were there for the opening—and for Yosemite!—and I had the chance to get together with many friends among them. It was also a time of atmospheric conditions that were spectacular in ways that interest me as a photographer – broken light, occasional rain, mist and clouds.

On this evening we went to Tunnel View since it was mostly gray down in the Valley and because there was some promise of not only drifting clouds and mist there, but also of some late day light. All of those things happened, but as the end of the day approached, the “lights went out” as the clouds to the west thickened and blocked the setting sun. I continued to shoot for a while, mostly focusing a long lens on small distant details within the scene, but I finally decided that the light was simply becoming too flat and I walked back to the car to pack up, thinking about the friends I would soon join for dinner in the Valley. At the back of the car I removed the long lens, collapsed the tripod, and was packing everything away when Patty, who was sitting the front seat and facing the valley, exclaimed, “Look at that light!” Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much, but when I looked up I saw a blood red band of light stretching across the cliffs of El Capitan on the left and Sentinel Rocks on the right. Apparently the sun had found a narrow gap in the clouds almost exactly at the point it reached the horizon far to the west. I immediately knew that this light would be gone very quickly—at best it might last a minute or two—so I worked very quickly to set up the tripod, attach the camera, and stick a long lens on it… not even looking up at the view as I worked. No time to look! I quickly moved the camera to the nearest possible shooting location and, working almost entirely intuitively, quickly picked out perhaps four different shots, each focusing on the momentarily best bit of light as the scene evolved quickly. The final bit of light was a rapidly fading stripe just across the snow- and cloud-shrouded summit of El Capitan, where the upper rocks, snow, and trees picked up the intense red light for a matter of a few seconds, and then it was gone.

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

Forest, Drifting Fog

March 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter evening fog drifts among forest trees, Yosemite National Park

Winter is a special time in Yosemite Valley, and during the first weekend of March it was special for all the usual reasons and a few others. The Yosemite Renaissance XXIX opening reception opening took place on Friday and the Range of Light Film Festival was going on all weekend. Not only did this provide opportunities to view beautiful interpretations of the Sierra and the park by a wide range of visual artists, but it also meant that the place was full of painters, sculptures, photographers, and film-makers, among whom were a good number of personal friends. It seemed like wherever I went I found people I knew. Many were doing their work, but there was a relaxed quality that led to plenty of sitting on rocks, looking at views, conversations, and even a few dinners.

But even without all of that, the Valley seems to me to be at almost its most attractive at this time of year. We arrived on a rainy late afternoon, with snow falling along the upper reaches of the Valley. Clouds and fog and mist were everywhere, blocking the light one moment and then moving to allow bits of light here and there to highlight ridges, trees, cliffs, and peaks. Even photographers who usually shoot somewhere else headed to familiar lookouts such as Tunnel View, and I found myself there more than once. For me, the primary attractions of that place at this time of year — in addition to running into friends and yakking it up — are the vignettes of bits of cloud-shrouded ridges and trees above and the frequent fogs floating through the forest on the Valley floor. So I put on a long lens and pointed the camera either up or down towards these subjects and watched the show. As I was photographing the fog drifting among trees down in the Valley, as in this photograph, I remarked to a nearby photographer friend that this subject forced me to toss out any attempt to work slowly and thoughtfully and methodically. The fog was inconstant motion among the trees and momentary compositions would coalesce in one or another part of the Valley below, only to disappear as quickly as they had appeared. In the time it takes to carefully frame and compose an image the momentary subject would simply disappear, either become completely obscured or else losing its magic as the fog thinned. Quick and instinctive work was and is the only thing that works here!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mist

Horsetail Fall

Winter Fog, Waterfall, and Trees

Forest, Drifting Fog

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