Tag Archives: morning

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

Trees and Meadow, Morning

September 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late season golden morning light on trees at the edge of Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park.

It is probably no secret that there are certain kinds of light that especially appeal to me. Among my favorite is early morning sunlight, shining through a bit of atmospheric haze, and illuminating trees. On top of that, I’m a big fan of the warm golden-brown tones of September and autumn in the Sierra. With all of that in mind, how could I resist this subject?

I was in Tuolumne Meadows for a couple of nights in mid-September, with two main goals in mind. First, I wanted to spend a few days at altitude before heading over to the east side to meet friends for a short pack trip up into McGee Canyon. Second – or perhaps this should be first – I wanted to do some photography in the area along Tioga Pass Road between roughly Olmsted Point and the pass itself. I arrived late the first day, with just enough time to set up camp, grab something to eat, and head out to shoot the evening light. I was up reasonably early the next morning and out and about looking for subjects before the sun came up. I decided to stick fairly close to the meadows this time, and after heading to the west end and looking back I saw this beautiful warm light coming across the meadow as the sun topped the crest near Mount Dana, and silhouetting a small group of tall trees at the meadow’s edge.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

September 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Red cliffs and rocks on a ledge at Park Avenue, Arches National Park.

I made this photograph fairly early in the morning at the Park Avenue area of Arches National Park. While morning might was hitting the walls behind my camera position, the walls in front of me were still in fairly deep shade. However, as the sun rose, its light began to come over the tops of these tall sandstone walls and spill down into the canyon. As the morning wore on, the light/shadow line began to move back closer to this wall, first illuminating the ledge and the fallen rocks in holds and then beginning to highlight edges of some of the cracks in the wall itself.

The Park Avenue area seems like one of the most accessible areas of this park being only a short distance inside the park boundaries and being very close to the roadway. The area is essentially a canyon between two nearly parallel walls of sandstone, often topped with remarkable towers and other features as the canyon descends toward where it opens up into sage brush country below. At this particular hour of this particular morning, as wonderful as that scene was, the light shooting down the canyon was only so-so, so I looked around, put on a long lens, and photographed smaller vignettes of the landscape such as this one.

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

Plants, Granite, Morning Light

August 31, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A few sparse plants grow in thin cracks in granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Portions of the Sierra high country in Yosemite have been heavily glaciated. The evidence is widespread and familiar in all of its variations: domes, U-shaped canyons, remnant glacial ice-fields and a few vestigial glaciers, glacial erratics everywhere, a terrain crossed with the remains of lateral, medial, and terminal moraines. And it places, such as this area along Tioga Pass Road, there are huge expanses of granite slabs, sloping and rounded nearly solid rock broken by cracks and dikes and surrounded by the debris of gradual erosion.

Lots of things managed to live on and in these slabs. The tiniest cracks collect sand, then dust and gravel, and soon small plants spring up and even wildflowers. In some places – including the more distant ridge in this photograph – large trees manage to sustain themselves by growing entirely in these cracks. In this photograph I juxtaposed the nearby small plants crowing in a couple of shallow cracks with the receding sequence of rolling dome-like ridges with shattered rock and a few trees, some of which catch the early morning sun, with details softened by the (perhaps unusual, for landscape photography) use of a small aperture to minimize depth of field.

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

Morning, Near Olmsted Point

August 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light on granite and sparse trees near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park

This is another photograph from 2011 on a late-July trip to the Yosemite high country along Tioga Pass Road. The photo was made in morning light in the general area of Olmsted Point, where a series of granite domes and ridges lines up roughly parallel to Tenaya Canyon and in the morning the brightly back-lit haze can create a sense of spatial depth and mute the details of the formations further away.

I suppose that backlit trees like this one are a bit of a theme for me – yet another Sierra subject I cannot resist photographing! The central tree is, obviously, just one of many thousands of trees right here but since it was the closest one it served as my subject. The tree is set in granite slabs topped with glacial erratics left behind when the last glaciation ended, and the slabs are mostly very solid, making the it all the more amazing that such a large and upright tree can grow here. Another ridge rises in the middle distance, and beyond it yet another ridge whose details are nearly invisible in the morning light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: morning

Trees and Meadow, Morning

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

Plants, Granite, Morning Light

Morning, Near Olmsted Point

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