Tag Archives: mist

Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley

Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley
Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley

Evening Fog, Forest, Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog drifts among forest trees on the floor of Yosemite Valley.

One more “misty Yosemite Valley” photograph – though perhaps not quite the final one just yet. This is similar to a photograph I posted earlier – another black and white image of evening fog floating among the trees of Yosemite Valley as seen from Wawona Tunnel View. The traditional and iconic scene from Tunnel View is impressive even in bland conditions, but photographing “that view” in such conditions is not a promising activity. But that wasn’t my plan. Noting that it had just rained for a day and was beginning to clear, I was pretty confident that this evening fog would form and begin to drift over and through the forest. My plan was to be at Tunnel View not to photograph El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Half Dome – which didn’t cooperate in the end anyway – but to point a very long lens downward toward the mist.

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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Autumn Rain, Merced River

Autumn Rain, Merced River
Autumn Rain, Merced River

Autumn Rain, Merced River. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fall colors and mist along the Merced River, Yosemite Valley.

Returning to the land of color – after a spate of recent black and white posts – this is a photograph made on a rainy day along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley, as fall color came to the trees and bushes and fog drifted along the walls of the Valley. This photograph was made from the bridge near Curry Village as it rained lightly and the colors were reflected in the calm surface of the river. Probably because of the damp weather and the relatively early hour there was hardly any one else around, and this in a location that is often quite busy.

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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Tree-Covered Ridge, Mist

Ridge and Fog, Yosemite Valley
Ridge and Fog, Yosemite Valley

Tree-Covered Ridge, Mist. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mist from an autumn storm obscures trees growing on a steep ridge near the rim of Yosemite Valley.

Since I’ve written about this series of photographs of cloud- and fog-shouded subjects in Yosemite Valley several times during the past week, I’ll keep the background short on this one. I used a long lens to isolate small scenes in which the clouds of an autumn storm alternately hid and (sometimes barely) revealed trees, cliffs, and rocky spires along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

In a few of the photographs I was thinking about how close I could get to having very little or almost no detail in the photograph and still make it work. Here the only real detail is in the diagonal of trees and rocks that is mostly obscured by the clouds, with only a few bits of tree being a bit darker. What I’m thinking of is more along the lines of suggesting the presence of the bit of cliff and trees than actually trying to show it explicitly.

This is, for me at least, a tricky thing! The temptation is to boost contrast in post to get more definition from the tree shapes, but that quickly leads to something that has a very different mood than that of the actual scene – and which can easily look phony. I think I’m heading in a direction I like here, but I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I have a chance to try a print in a week or so.

(By the way, if your monitor is even a little bit “off,” you may see some colorations in this monochrome image that aren’t really there. Sorry! :-)

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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Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds

Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds
Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds

Trees, Cliffs, and Clouds. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds from an autumn storm drift among trees and spires along the rim of Yosemite Valley.

This is another in the series of photographs of mist and clouds and trees and cliffs during an autumn storm in Yosemite Valley. Here the clouds float among trees and spires along the rim of the Valley. I was looking for something very much like this as shot in the Valley, and here I spotted an interesting angle in the valley rim and then waited as the clouds floated in and out of the scene for a moment during which just enough of the detail of rocks and trees would be revealed for a moment.

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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