Tag Archives: mountains

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Outcropping, White Mountains, Morning

October 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The White Mountains with new snow and morning clouds tower above a spire in the Buttermilks above Bishop, California

In early October, my excuse for going – yet again – to the eastern Sierra was, of course, to shoot the beautiful fall color of the aspen trees. That is reason enough to head over there, and I go every fall. And I did photograph aspens while I was over there. But my little secret is that there is a lot more than aspens to photograph on the East Side in the fall, and while aspens were always on my mind, photographing them took up less than half of our time overall.

The first day of the visit was devoted largely to travel, and the travel took longer than usual because a fall snow storm was passing through, closing passes so that we had to cross the Sierra much further north than usual, and then slowing the drive down highway 395. (The slow drive was partially due to road conditions, but perhaps more due to interesting photographic conditions that led to a lot of side trips and stops along the way.) On the second morning I knew that there would be a layer of fresh snow on the east facing slopes of the crest above Owens Valley, so we drove up into the Buttermilk area above Bishop to photograph there at dawn. After finishing up there we headed back down to pick up the road up into the Bishop Creek drainage. As we drove I saw some of the interesting pinnacles of the Buttermilks catching the morning sun as the huge ridge of the White Mountains, also covered with new snow, towered over on the other side of Owens Valley.

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

Solitary Tree, Glacial Erratic Boulders

September 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A solitary tree grows on granite slabs, surrounded by glacial erratic boulders

I made this photograph at a well-known and increasingly iconic location along the Tioga Pass Road as it passes along the Sierra high country terrain as it ascends toward Tioga Pass. This spot could probably serve as a prime lesson about how many other opportunities and ways to see there are for Sierra photographers, even when shooting with certain big, famous iconic features only a few degrees of tripod swivel away! (It is OK to photograph the icons, too – we all do it. But it is more rewarding I think, to also look beyond such things to see the much larger and equally beautiful world around them.)

The basics of looking beyond icons involve, well, looking around. A first step might be to go ahead and photograph the icon a few times, get to know it, and perhaps eventually shoot it when there is something a bit different about it – unusual weather conditions, a different time of day, out of season, etc. But the next step is to look in other directions, poke around a bit, and think about just what else contributes to the subjective experience of being in that place. I come to this spot frequently just before sunrise, and at that time the beautiful glacial erratic boulders strewn about the terrain are highlighted by the slanting, warm light and some of the more distant features are beautifully obscured by shadow and atmospheric haze.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Paoha Island, Mono Lake, Evening

September 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Pastel colors in evening clouds above Paoha Island reflect on the surface of Mono Lake

On this evening I ended up at Mono Lake on more or less a hunch about the clouds – thunder clouds had built to the east out over the basin and range country and even a bit over the Sierra, and I had heard a report of thunder and lightning a bit north of here, so I decided to chance an evening visit to the south shore of the lake. Mono Lake evening light can be very special, but it can also be a bit tricky. Because the tall peaks of the Sierra Nevada crest lie directly to the west, the light leaves the lake itself well before actual sunset, so you often might end up relying on the clouds themselves to provide most of the interest. Smoke from a wildfire to the south near Mammoth Lakes had also been affecting the atmosphere, creating a lot of haze and some unusual colors.

In any case, I drove out to a point along the south shore of the lake – not the well-known South Tufa site, though visible from there – and watched the mostly uninspiring light of this very hazy evening. But there I was, and there wasn’t time before the end of the light to get from Mono Lake to other places that might be interesting, so I stayed and photographed and thought about how I might be able to work with the light and conditions that were available to me. There were beautifully shaped clouds, and they rose high enough above the lower atmosphere to gain some clarity. The haze muted the shapes and colors of the far hills and the darker shape of the island. So I composed the scene to just barely hold the island and a bit of the lake at the bottom, and used that to anchor a scene that was mostly sky.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Desert Sky, Negit Island

September 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mono Lake and dark Negit Island beneath a vast and cloud-filled summer sky

Mono Lake still seems like a somewhat mysterious place to me. Although I’m familiar with parts of it, having gone by and to it for many years on Sierra trips and having photographed there many times, I find it hard to quite get my mind around it in the same way that I can with many other places. There are probably several factors that contribute to this. First, it is obviously an absolutely huge place. While I can see the far side of the lake and the mountains beyond, they are a great distance away, as I’ve realized when traveling just part way around it – so I have looked at much of it but I have not directly experienced that much of it close up. Second, we feel that we know the chief features of this lake very well – they are, I suppose, the lowering water level of this close-off basin lake, its tremendous size, the mineral-filled water, and the famous tufa formations. But a bit more time, even only that time that I’ve spent there that is mostly secondary to “Sierra time,” and it starts to be clear that these things are not the whole story.

Some years ago, when photographing the tufas around dawn, mostly when almost no one else was around, I began to catch on to the fact that things like the sounds of flocks of birds, the immense distances on land and – especially – in the huge sky, the wind, and the deep quiet of the place have more to do with its character than the tufas. Often when I stop there now I do not go to the tufas at all, instead perhaps expanding my knowledge of other areas of the lake and surrounding country. This photograph was made from above the lake, in a location where I could look slightly down on the water, which better shows its expanse, and on the dark shape of volcanic Negit Island. But I chose to include them primarily not for their own value but rather to anchor that vast sky with its building afternoon clouds.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mountains

Outcropping, White Mountains, Morning

Solitary Tree, Glacial Erratic Boulders

Paoha Island, Mono Lake, Evening

Desert Sky, Negit Island

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