Tag Archives: Mountain

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

Red, White, and Blue Hour

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Red, White, and Blue Hour
Red, White, and Blue Hour

Red, White, and Blue Hour. Yosemite National Park, California. March 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last red sunset light falls on a forested ridge in front of snow topped Half Dome in blue dusk light

This past winter I was in Yosemite Valley for a few days for the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance Exhibit, and I had many opportunities to head out and photograph the Valley in beautiful foggy, cloudy conditions, with a bit of snow still remaining from earlier storms. (I also had a great time meeting up with plenty of other friends and photographers who were also there for this event and a simultaneous film festival.)

Sometimes I know what I want to photograph in the Valley, and I simply to look for that thing, often knowing exactly where to go find it. But in conditions such as those of this weekend, which included a lot of clouds and changing light, sometimes it was impossible to know for sure what the conditions were going to do. See fog developing? Head for a high place or a meadow. Possibility of sunset color? Perhaps one of the well-known Valley views. Clouds swirling around the upper ridges? Get out a long lens and shoot from innumerable locations. Soft sunlight? Perhaps time to photograph trees and granite. On this evening a number of us ended up at that most iconic of iconic Yosemite locations, Tunnel View. For the last few years, I’ve been playing a slightly different game at Tunnel View when I end up there, often shooting with very long focal lengths and trying to pick out small bits and pieces of the larger scene. I had been doing that and had pretty much wrapped up for the evening, since the light seemed to be dying behind clouds to the west, and in fact I was loading equipment into the car when my wife said, more or less, “Look at that!” A band of intensely red end-of-sunset light had found its way through a gap in the clouds to the west and suddenly cast an intense glow across this ridge standing between me and Half Dome. So we have red (of sun on ridge), white (of snow) and blue (of the blue hour light on Half Dome and the clouds above).

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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

Cascade, Boulders

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Cascade, Boulders
Cascade, Boulders

Cascade, Boulders. Yosemite National Park, California. May 4, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A seasonal waterfall cascades past granite boulders, Yosemite National Park

I guess I’ll go ahead and make this a “waterfall weekend” by posting a second photograph of the same little cascading creek that was featured in yesterday’s photograph. This small beauty is a seasonal cascade that is right next to the roadway—I’m definitely not taking any “wilderness photography” credit for this one. (Though the character if the creek is very similar to and remiss me of many such rocky creeks found in less accessible locations.) As is the case with some many such small creeks, this one comes and goes quickly in most years. It does not necessarily dry up completely, but it often diminishes to an unimpressive trickle later on.

Although the accessible location makes photographing this fall easy, there are still a few challenges. Perhaps the most mundane is that, given that one is photographing from the shoulder of a highway, you have to watch out for passing vehicles! From a photographic perspective there are a few more interesting challenges. One is that of composition. This section of the waterfall is some distance above the camera position, and there are only a few clean shots of it. I wanted some of the curving and flowing shapes at the top along with the faster moving, and hence narrower, section at the bottom, and I wanted to include the blocky, wet, and reflective rocks. The light is a bit tricky here, too. Fortunately, the cascade remains in shadow well after sunrise, but the best light seems to come at just about the moment when the sun starts to rise above the ridge behind the fall. Consequently, though it isn’t visible in this tightly cropped composition, I was shooting almost straight into the sun!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Pacific Coast Highway, Clearing Fog

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Pacific Coast Highway, Clearing Fog
Pacific Coast Highway, Clearing Fog

Pacific Coast Highway, Clearing Fog. Pacific Coast Highway, California. May 26, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning fog clears above Rocky Point along the Pacific Coast Highway near Big Sur, California

I spent a good part of this beautiful spring day photographing along the upper half of California’ Big Sur coastline along the Pacific Coast Highway. On this potentially (and ultimately!) very busy holiday, I made a point of arriving early, since this area is so popular, especially on a day like this one when it was mostly sunny but with just enough fog to make it picturesque.

This photograph includes the area around Rocky Point which, while not being the main iconic view in this spot perhaps does come close to having that distinction. From the small arch in the foreground to the curving coast and seas stacks to the taller coastal mountains, the scene has many of the features that define this coastline. The fog was trying valiantly to maintain itself—driving into it the temperature dropped by many degrees and the wind whipped up—but the sun was winning.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

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Mountains, Sea, and Haze
Mountains, Sea, and Haze

Mountains, Sea, and Haze. Big Sur Coast, California. May 26, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Spring haze, morning light, and rugged mountains meeting the Pacific Ocean, Big Sur coast

This spot marked the furthest south that I travelled on my brief photographic foray along the Big Sur coast earlier this week. Here, as in a number of other spots along this section of the Pacific Coast Highway, the route rises high above the ocean to pass through a section of very steep cliffs where the coastal mountains and the ocean meet abruptly. From this overlook the spines of a few nearby ridges were just to my south, and beyond the shoreline disappeared into the glowing atmospheric haze to the south.

One of the advantages of modern digital cameras is that they permit more flexibility and allow us to make aesthetic choices about our photographs more freely. Although I mostly “see” in color, sometimes a subject works better in black and white. Sometimes I don’t even realize this at the time of the exposure. Which is OK, since digital allows us to sometimes think less of “making the photograph” in the field and perhaps more about “bringing the image back” for full realization in the post-processing stage. In some cases, it allows us to focus more on pure capture and to put off some of the decisions we might have had to make at that point until later. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing! However, this is an example of a photograph that I knew was going to be black and white as soon as I saw the scene. Looking south along this coast on a day like this one, the air is filled with a haze made luminous by backlight. Colors are often so muted that they might as well be black and white, and the haze itself can take on a strong blue cast. Here I didn’t want that blue haze effect, but I did want the glow and the strong shapes of the ridges dropping into the sea.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.