Tag Archives: mountains

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

Riparian Thicket, Yosemite Valley

February 21, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy afternoon winter light in a thicket of trees along the banks of the Merced River, Yosemite Valley

A shorter than usual post today, as I’m dealing (successfully!) with an unexpected eye problem, and one effect of the treatment is that I need to minimize computer/reading/writing time for a few days. (The short story is that I had retinal detachment, we caught it right away, were able to treat it on an out-patient basis, I’m home, and the results look fine. In short, what looked scary at first appears to be heading towards an excellent outcome.) So, briefly…

A week ago I was in Yosemite Valley for about two hours between visits to a couple of other places, and I had time to photograph around one of the large meadows late in the day, as the afternoon sun was dropping toward the tops of the cliffs and the hazy air became luminous. I wandered over to a section of the Merced River where I like to photograph cottonwood trees in spring and fall, and looking down the river I saw this little vignette in the backlight.

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

Forest, Afternoon Light

February 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy afternoon winter light in a Yosemite Valley hardwood forest

This may have been just about the briefest visit to Yosemite Valley that I have ever made. We drove up from the Bay Area for two days and one night so that we could attend the opening reception for an art exhibit (Sierra Art Trails) in Oakhurst. We had thought that we might visit one of the Central Valley wildlife refuges on the way — and we ended up spending enough time there that it was after 3:00 when we got to the Yosemite Valley. We briefly stopped to watch people setting up to try to photograph Horsetail Fall, which we did not intend to do, and then headed up to one of the large meadows where I thought that I could photograph trees backlit by the low angle afternoon light.

I started out in a meadow, photographing trees to my west silhouetted against the hazy backlight. Finishing with this subject I wandered over to the banks of the Merced River to look for closer subjects, and as I looked west I saw this tangle of trees which gradually resolved into patterns of downward curving branches superimposed on taller tree trunks leaning to both sides. One challenge was trying to find a composition in this complexity, and another was shooting straight toward the sun without ending up with lens flare. The first took some careful thought, while the second required some contortions to shade the lens with my hand.

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

Afternoon Light, Forest and Cliff

February 16, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yosemite Valley forest and cliffs in hazy late afternoon light

This past weekend I had time to visit Yosemite Valley for a couple of hours. That doesn’t sound like much time, but it is enough to see a few things and make a few photographs. (We would have had more time, but we were distracted by migratory birds as we crossed the Central Valley, and by the time we arrived in the park it was mid afternoon.) Coming into the Valley we spotted the first evidence of the annual migration of the Horsetail Fall photographers, lined up in a spot along the Merced River a few hours before sunset. (We saw more of them on the way out of the Valley later in the evening.)

For me, photography in the Valley is often about the light, with the quality of the atmosphere being close to the light in importance. Given that there were no clouds I was not too optimistic about the prospects, but when we arrived at a meadow late in the afternoon I saw some beautiful haze that was starting to be backlit by the lowering sun. I found some trees — the group in this photograph and others in a pair of photographs I’ll share later — and I looked for a composition that eliminated the bright sky, that put the sun close to directly behind the trees, and which put some of the valley walls and towers in the frame in order to provide some form and textural relief to the haze. Then it was a matter of lining up the elements of the photograph so that the tallest trees were within the outline of a large tower. Shooting almost straight into the sun (and engaging in interesting gymnastics in order to shield the front element of my lens from flare-producing direct light), I made a few exposures.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin

Evening Shadows, Mono Lake

January 26, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening shadows fall across the western shore and islands of Mono Lake

The landscape of Mono Lake, near Lee Vining, California, provides a stark contrast to the Sierra Nevada just to the west. From the alpine ridges of the Sierra along and just north of Yosemite, the eastern slopes of the range drop quickly to Lee Vining and the broad valley beyond. The lake sits in a dry basin that has no outlet, so the water simply (for the most part) evaporates.

The lake is huge, stretching far to the east beyond Lee Vining. The landscape of the lake is simple, partly because the surrounding area was once submerged when the lake was much larger than it is today. Far in the distance is Boundary Peak and the ridge of the White Mountains. The sun sets early here, since the tall peaks of the Sierra raise to the west, and in this photograph deep shadows are already angling across the western shores of the lake.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mountains

Riparian Thicket, Yosemite Valley

Forest, Afternoon Light

Afternoon Light, Forest and Cliff

Evening Shadows, Mono Lake

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