Tag Archives: morning

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Meadow Plants, Early Snow

December 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Meadow plants bend beneath the weight of an early October snowfall, eastern Sierra Nevada, California.

I made this photograph on a very cold early October morning high in the eastern Sierra after a series of early season snow storms had passed over the Sierra. The gravel road to North Lake had apparently just opened again on the morning I arrived, and few other people were there. I was there to photograph autumn aspen color, but the opportunity to photograph snow scenes so early in the season distracted me.

As I walked the road skirting the edge of North Lake, I passed by meadows that were completely covered by new, untouched snow. Here and there a few small plants managed to poke up from beneath the white blanket.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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

Forest, Morning Light

December 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light strikes a tree in a small grove of trees surrounded by Sierra Nevada granite boulders, Yosemite National Park.

This is really a very unremarkable scene in most ways. The foreground tree, with its top leaning over to the right, sits in a mixed forest/meadow area behind some rocks that look like the remains of an old glacial moraine. (This area was largely formed by glaciers, and their evidence is everywhere here.) Beyond the moraine and out of sight from this position is a good-size subalpine lake, and above that rocky, talus-covered slopes lead upwards to much higher alpine ridges and peaks.

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

Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks

December 21, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree grows in a shoreline rock garden along a Sierra Nevada lake in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

I’m posting this one because a person who posted here a week or two ago on a similar photograph asked whether I had made any photographs that included a bit more of the surface of the lake and its reflections of the forest in the distance. In fact, I had one more, and this is it.

I made this photograph and the other one in soft light at the edge of the day when no direct sunlight was in the scene at all. While this can flatten the light a bit, it also tends to fill in that shadow areas and create a less harsh sort of light. In also contributed to the interesting reflected and diffused forms of the forest along the far bank of the lake, whose vertical forms cross the horizontal forms of underwater rocks along the bottom of the lake bed.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: morning

Meadow Plants, Early Snow

Forest, Morning Light

Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks

Shoreline Boulders and Trees, Morning

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