Tag Archives: national

Branch With Spring Leaves, Zion National Park

April 11, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

New spring leaves and seeds appear on the branch of a box elder tree, Zion National Park, Utah.

Among the places I photographed on my recent Utah trip was Zion National Park – I place about which I have heard and seen much, but which I had not previously visited. A friend described the Virgin River Canyon in this park as “Yosemite Valley in red,” and this seems like an apt description. I responded differently to each of the parks we visited. Canyonlands was huge and austere. Arches was literally “fantastic,” and elicited the most intense response. But Zion seems like a place that is more subtle, with a lot to see and get to know.

Among the features that seem to me to typify this area are the cottonwood, box elder, red maple, and other trees. During our visit they were just barely beginning to get their new spring leaves – in some places we saw bare trees, in a few we saw trees that had almost a full set of leaves, but for the most part we saw trees that had just a hint of the bright green color of new leaves. One morning we took the short walk to weeping rock in Zion Canyon. While I didn’t quite see photographs in this feature itself, I did spot this box elder branch suspended just about the trail, backlit by morning light and with the faint colors of sandstone cliffs and canyon bottom plants beyond.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Green River Canyon, Evening

April 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I recently returned from a week in Utah which, perhaps surprisingly, was completely new to me as a photographic subject. More about that in a moment, but first a description of the photograph. It was made in Canyonlands National Park in the “Island in the Sky” area, looking west from a high viewpoint above the canyon containing the winding Green River, not far above its confluence with the Colorado River. The “Island” is a high and relatively flat plateau at around 6000+’ of elevation, surrounding on many sides by deep canyons, cliffs, and then several levels of lower plateaus. There are “edges” everywhere, and all of them provide stunning vistas into the vast spaces below and beyond. We ended up at this spot largely due to a photograph I had seen an a park brochure that included a view of receding mesas and canyons in evening light. We scouted it in the middle of the afternoon as we visited several places in this area of the park, and it seemed inevitable that I would end up at sunset. I initially imagined a scene with brighter colors from the sunset and the post-sunset sky, but instead I ended up with something that I think I like even more, namely softer light with haze in the atmosphere and somewhat gentler colors.

As I mentioned above, I have not photographed in Utah before. I had been through the state several times many years ago, but I think we more or less sped through on interstate highways – which don’t tend to follow the most scenic routes – and I had a very limited view of the place. While it is too bad that I waited so long to go there, it gave me the opportunity to have an experience that I don’t have nearly as often in California where I do most of my shooting. Because I live within a short drive of redwood forests, the Pacific coast, and places like Yosemite Valley and the Sierra and visit all of them frequently, I have to admit that I sometimes forget how extraordinary they are. I can drive right past Yosemite’s Tunnel View if the view is just a typical Yosemite Valley view. But on this trip, I more or less intentionally avoided investigating our destinations before we left. Consequently, I had opportunities to be surprised and astonished — like any good tourist! — by things that I was seeing for the first time. For example, I really had no idea what I would see at Arches National Park when we drove into it at just about the “golden hour” – and I was completely stunned by impossible structures and juxtapositions of sandstone columns and arches and towers and cliffs. I just got a quick taste on this trip… but I’ll be back.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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

Impossible Tree Fall, Spring

April 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rushing water of a seasonal creek splashes and leaps over rocks and past a tree, Yosemite National Park.

The name of this little seasonal waterfall – found along highway 120 – is not, as far as I can tell, official. However, it seems to be fairly well-known among Yosemite folks. It is also a great name – not only because of the fun conduction of words, but also because it so aptly describes the most notable feature of the fall, the “impossible tree.” In this odd little section of rocky hillside above a road, a creek flows for a short time in the spring as the winter snow melts out. In this middle of this rocky jumble grows a single tree, with its roots seemingly attached to nothing more than rocks. So it is a doubly impossible tree, growing in the middle of a waterfall and somehow finding sustenance from granite.

This photograph was made outside of the more typical “golden hour” time, though it wasn’t all that late in the morning. My timing was just right – though luck probably had as much to do with this as did planning. As we passed by, the sun was rising high enough to peek over the top of the ridge above the fall and its light was just starting to strike the leaping water from behind and above.

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

Spring Torrent, Yosemite

April 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A cascading creek zigzags among boulders as it descends a steep mountainside, Yosemite National Park.

This is a scene I have photographed many times, as I continue to work on “seeing” and understanding its elements. (And as I work on trying not to duplicate other beautiful “takes” on this location that have been produced by other photographers whose work I respect a great deal!) As a matter of fact, the “many times” would have to include the many times I photographed it on this particular visit, as photographing moving water tends to be a bit of a game of percentages. While you can start to gauge some of the patterns of the water if you watch long and intently enough, in the end you have to take what you get to some extent. Fortunately, with digital cameras it is possible to improve the odds a bit since one can make a lot of exposures, with the only real cost being the great amount of time required to go through them all.

This photograph was made at just about the peak of the spring runoff season, and during a year that had featured well above average precipitation during the previous winter. In mid-June (about the time that Tioga Pass finally opened) there was water flowing everywhere – obviously in the many well-known creeks and rivers and waterfalls, but also in places where you might otherwise not expect to see flowing water. Impromptu seasonal streams were everywhere, flowing across granite and through forests and often spilling right across the roadways. The object in this photograph was to try to shoot straight into the maelstrom of the current as it dropped down a steep hillside, twisting and turning as it passed through a narrow, rocky area.

G Dan Mitchell Photography