Tag Archives: mountains

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Dense Aspen Grove

October 12, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Small aspen trees, packed closely together, with golden autumn leaves, Eastern Sierra Nevada

While the exuberant colors of large groves of autumn aspens are attractive, there is something about the trunks that is hard to resist, even when the colors may have diminished a bit — or perhaps because the colors are less striking. I know I’m not the only photographer who returns to this “take” on the subject. It is fun and more than a bit challenging to make compositions out of such complexity. Frequently I’ll stop and look at a grove, think “that will make a great photograph,” and then gradually discover that some subtle element is not quite right and the whole thing won’t work. I’m continually surprised that a subject that seems so simple often isn’t.

To a great extent it is a question of balance of several sorts. The complex patterns of trunks cannot be completely uniform or there will be no form to the image. There must be some differentiation in the ways that trunks are grouped and among the angles of branches. But too much differentiation is also a problem. There is a “just right” quality to these compositions that is hard to explain, but which I know when I see it. A bit of “dissonance” can help, too — a little bit of something that seems to step outside the predominant patterns. In this photograph that could be the diagonal branches at coming across from the right, or it might be the group of closer leaves along one side. There is also some sense of depth, and if you look closely you may see a good distance into the more distant and darker areas of the small grove. And aside from the obvious vertical lines, there are three horizontal layers — brush at the bottom, trunks in the middle, and yellow leaves at the top.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Glaciated Terrain

October 6, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees in morning light on a glaciated dome, back by an immense fractured granite face, Yosemite National Park

I’m often out before the first light and then again as the last sunlight turns to dusk. These are not the only times of day worth photographing, but they are times that often produce beautiful light and colors and effects, with warm light and dramatic shadows. Many times — even during the busiest times of the year — I have stood it some of the most impressive locations and witnesses the most astonishing light… almost alone. I don’t know whether to encourage everyone to get up early and stay out late or to perhaps just keep relatively quiet and enjoy the solitude! I sometimes wonder how different our ideas of the Sierra are, depending upon when we are out and about as more or more than where we go.

In a spot like this one, the arrival of morning light is a highly dynamic thing — not at all a static or even slow-moving event. For example, here the light is raking across the foreground granite slab the tilts down from left to right, at the angle of the light is only briefly ideal to light the trees without also lighting the granite. The whole transition from first light on tree tops to a bit too much on the granite might take little more than a minute.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Dawn, Desert Mountains, Lake

October 5, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn haze above Mono Lake and desert mountains

Many people perhaps think first of tufa formations when they think of Mono Lake — and given their novel quality and popularity, who can blame them? But as interesting as those formations are, they are not what first comes to mind for me when I think of this place. Instead, my associations are with immense sky, profound silence, perhaps birds, and, of course, wind. Despite being so close to the Sierra, with its intimate forest and meadow landscapes and towering alpine peaks, this place seems much different.

I made this photograph from a high place early on an autumn morning, when haze that may have come from many sources including wildfires, muted and obscured the details of the landscape, leaving mostly the larger features and forms. The foreground is a bit of the lake surface, and beyond the surrounding basin rises toward a succession of high and barren ridges and peaks as the first light makes the atmosphere luminous.

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Evening, Eastern Sierra

October 3, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy evening light on golden meadow, aspen trees, and ascending slopes, eastern Sierra Nevada

When I travel to the Eastern Sierra at this time of year, I always begin my trips with aspen color as my object. But once I get there I often — once again! — find a myriad of other subjects I associate just as much with the fall season. I made this photograph in the evening, not long before actual sunset, as the last sunlight was coming across the crest of the range and sweeping down across the dry eastern slopes. Rounded ridges, broken here and there by rocky outcroppings and scattered groves of trees, ascend toward the monumental eastern escarpment, here muted by autumn haze.

This spot is wild but not wilderness. A small cabin sits in the meadow at the base of the hills, gravel roads cut through the landscape, and at this time of year photographers, hunters, anglers, ranchers, and aspen-seekers follow gravel roads far up these slopes. This is a transitional zone, between the high sagebrush desert to the east and the conifer forest far above, and it is not the same Sierra of granite and conifer forests that most of us associate with the range. But if you travel up and down the east side much, you eventually learn that it is as much “Sierra Nevada” as any landscape.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mountains

Dense Aspen Grove

Glaciated Terrain

Dawn, Desert Mountains, Lake

Autumn Evening, Eastern Sierra

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