Tag Archives: Mountain

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

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

May 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Panamint Mountains, Spring

May 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Cloud shadows pass across valleys of spring-green high desert plants in the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Park

I like to think of this photograph as one that may offer a more truthful presentation of the character of Death Valley. As photographers, almost all of us to looking for the extraordinary—momentary instances of astonishing light, brilliant color towering clouds, dramatic light, and more. And, of course, there is nothing remotely wrong with that. It is these things that draw us to these places and which drive our search once we get there. We will often put up with, sometimes patiently and sometimes not, hours or days of what some call “blah” light in order to be able to photograph brief instance of something atypically powerful. But we must be aware that what we find and show in this brief slices of time is often special precisely because it is unusual.

A few years back I started thinking more about my relationship with the landscape of Death Valley and the surrounding terrain. I had been focusing on the extraordinary—and I still do—and on the way to such places I often passed through other areas, sometimes without taking the time to think about what I was seeing in those moments. I think that it was partially out of frustration that I arrived at the idea of trying to see these subjects more clearly and try to figure out how to photograph them. After all, I knew—at least once I stopped to think about it—that my love of this places was not limited to just the unusual and extraordinary moments, but that it also included midday quiet in the heat and subtle colors of sage country, a series of simple overlapping ridges, a bit of rock. And once I recognized this I started to think that these things, and not just sunrises and sunsets and impressive formations and unusual clouds, might make worthy subjects if I slowed down and tried to understand them. And this is one of those photographs. There is no single, impressive subject in this frame. Instead we have the almost uniform pale green of the arid mountain plants on an early spring day after rain, when the plants produce a subtle but surprising green coloration that varies as the land alternates between gullies and the tops of low hills and clouds from a cleaning storm move across the landscape.

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

Winter Meadow, Forest

April 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest and snow-topped cliffs above a winter meadow, Yosemite Valley

During this distressingly dry season in California, our three-day visit to Yosemite Valley in early March was a welcome relief. It was raining when we arrived, and it remained cloudy and wet for the entire period, with breaks in the rain but not the clouds. We were there for the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit, which continues in the Visitor Center Gallery through early March. (Stop in and take a look if you make it to the Valley. This is a wonderful annual juried show of art related to Yosemite and the Sierra. And, yes, one of my prints is there.)

The scene here is a popular and well-known Cook’s Meadow. As is normal in the winter, the grasses that are so green in spring and early summer have gone dormant, as have most of the other plants in the meadow itself. This is such a familiar scene—though always a beautiful one—that I most often would not stop to photograph. However, among the brown tones the one spots of bright red among the foreground brush caught my attention, and the light had a warm and glowing quality that was special. The light falling on the forest was very soft, filtered though thin clouds above and to the east, and snow from the passing storm covered the upper reaches of the cliff walls around the Valley.

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

Granite Face, New Snow

April 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

New snow on ledges and trees at the base of the face of Half Dome

This photograph was made the morning after a Sierra winter storm had coated the high country of the Yosemite Sierra with a fresh coat of snow. The snow did not quite make it all the way down to the bottom of Yosemite Valley, but it covered most of the slopes, fissures, and trees of the walls and peaks around the Valley.

I don’t often photograph Half Dome—I can go days in the Valley without doing so at times—but I did photograph it a few times on this trip. At one point I photographed it wreathed in moving clouds and fog, barely visible. Here I photographed the famous face of the mountain, though I wanted to focus on the combination of new snow and small trees dwarfed by the giant and nearly smooth granite face, and to capture something of the cold, hard feeling of this winter view.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: Mountain

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

Winter Meadow, Forest

Granite Face, New Snow

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