Tag Archives: national

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Tree, Red Rock, Morning Light

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Tree, Red Rock, Morning Light
A lone tree in morning backlight against a backdrop of red rock formations, Zion National Park.

Tree, Red Rock, Morning Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone tree in morning backlight against a backdrop of red rock formations, Zion National Park.

We recently managed to get away for our first long road trip in a very long time. We started in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where the annual autumn aspen color show was well underway. From there we headed to Utah — which I have not visited since before the previous presidential administration — where we spent several days photographing in Zion National Park. From there we moved on to spend some time on one of the less-travelled Utah backroads before heading south for a very quick visit to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. (The story of that part of the trip is a bit too long to relate here. Perhaps later…)

Our visit to Zion was divided roughly into two sections. We spent the first part of the visit exploring and photographing sections of Zion Canyon on foot. Then we spent a day in the “high country” along the Mount Carmel highway, an area with an infinity of photographic opportunities that change with the light throughout the day. That is the area where I made this photograph of a solitary tree standing atop a sand stone formation in the brilliantly bright morning back-light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Autumn Meadow, Forest, and Peak

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Autumn Meadow, Forest, and Peak
A peak towers above colorful autumn aspen groves at the edge of a meadow in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Autumn Meadow, Forest, and Peak. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A peak towers above colorful autumn aspen groves at the edge of a meadow in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

When it comes to visiting the Sierra Nevada, the past couple of years have been a challenge! Travel was hard in general during the summer of 2020. I managed to get up there briefly in the late summer, but I ran into wildfire issues and had to cancel out of the one backpack trip I had planned. I got to the Sierra a couple of times this season, but on each visit something threw a monkey wrench into my plans and I had to improvise or leave early. During the past few days I managed to get to the east side to see the aspen color. But (yes, here it comes) I hit wildfire smoke south of Bridgeport, and when CalTrans started closing passes yesterday in anticipation of several inches of new snow, I high-tailed it back home.

However, I did see and photograph some aspen color. For the most part, I saw some pretty decent color, with the promise of more to come. There were quite a few colorful trees and plenty of others with hints of color to come over the next couple of weeks. If you can avoid the smoke, it should be good. (It was sad to see many newly-brown trees along Tioga Pass Road on my way home, trees that appear to be suffering from the drought.)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Lake, Ridges, Evening Light

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Lake, Ridges, Evening Light
Mountaintop trees stand above a sub-alpine lake, dome, and ridge in evening light, Yosemite National Park

Lake, Ridges, Evening Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mountaintop trees stand above a sub-alpine lake, dome, and ridge in evening light, Yosemite National Park.

This photograph (and its appearance here) is a bit unusual for me, though not entirely unprecedented. It is a photograph that I have shared previously, back when I originally made it some years ago. During the last year and a half I have had plenty of opportunities to revisit older work. Mostly this has meant exploring raw file archives to locate work that was “left behind,” but which turned out to be interesting and valuable in retrospect — photographs that I felt deserved a first showing. But this case represents something different — the rethinking of a photograph that I thought I had finished.

Revisiting and revising one of my previously-shared photographs usually leads to some relatively obvious changes. But in this case I think that changes may be subtle. Theres a small change in how it is cropped, some new ideas about how to handle the foreground light, some important but small changes to the middle forest and peak just beyond the lake, and some new adjustments to the sky. In my view, it is perfectly natural and good to revisit the original interpretation of a photograph over time, a process that was perhaps more common in the film era.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Trees in Morning Sun

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Trees in Morning Sun
Silhouetted trees in brilliant morning sunlight along the shore of a Yosemite Wilderness lake.

Trees in Morning Sun. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Silhouetted trees in brilliant morning sunlight along the shore of a Yosemite Wilderness lake.

This is another photograph from the Sierra Nevada that seems place-specific only in the most general sense. You can find similar scenes of trees and boulders along the edge of countless lakes and ponds in the range. If you explore them in the early morning or late in the day you are bound to end up looking into this brilliant light and perhaps shielding your eyes in the shadows of one of the trees.

This particular scene is in the Yosemite backcountry at just such a lake — a moderate-sized body of water nestled among trees interspersed with the ubiquitous granite boulders left behind by glacial action. It can produce a complex and detailed scene, but one with a definite sense of order once you see it. Beyond the physical reality of such places, I always thing of the sensations that accompany a walk through this terrain — the careful steps over and around boulders, climbing over the fallen snags, the contrast between cool air and intense sunlight, and perhaps the sound of water along the shore.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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