Tag Archives: needles

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

Trees, Granite, and Afternoon Haze

November 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon sun back-lights haze around trees growing on granite domes along the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

I’m a big fan of shooting almost straight into the sun, especially when haze is involved and even more so when backlit trees can be the subject. This photograph was made in essentially these very backlit conditions, with the direct sun just a bit above and to the side of the scene. I liked the way that the near tree’s branches had more presence in front of the haze-faded low contrast background of the nearby ridge with trees and the further ridge fading into the bright haze.

I posted a slightly different version of this scene last week – one in which I had placed the tree almost directly in the center of the frame. Although some will cite some “rule of composition” to disallow that sort of composition, I think that the rules don’t make a lot of sense if your way of applying them is to simply follow them slavishly. I consider them to be more like “observations about composition” than rules of composition. It isn’t that placing a subject in the center of the frame is wrong, it is just that doing so can have a very different effect than putting it along an edge, one-third of the way in from a corner, at the bottom or top of the frame, and so forth. It is more important to get a sense – either intuitive or analytical – of the effects might be of these different placement options. In any case, I liked the centered composition of the other version – centered compositions can have a certain kind of calm strength, and the centering perhaps focused a bit more attention on the tree and a bit less on the background.

At the same time, I like this more “tradition” composition that places the tree a bit off-center to the right side of the frame. In a way, this opens up the frame a bit and I think it gives the middle ridge and its trees a bit more presence. I think it also allows the viewer to see the subtle light on those middle distance trees a bit better. And speaking of that part of the scene… I made a mistake at the time of exposure. With the sun almost in the field of view of the lens, I had to shield the front of the lens from the sun – but in this image I apparently missed a bit since I found a fairly obvious reddish flare in part of the frame. I’m glad to say that by a combination of color balance correction, some control over saturation, and a bit of work with a curve…. I think that I have managed to make the flare go away!

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

Tree and Stained Granite

November 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree grows from a crack in red-stained granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Back in mid-September of this year I joined a group of five other photographers for a bit more than a week of photography in the High Sierra back-country of Yosemite National Park, going out along the Tuolumne River and spending some significant time in two locations and having several days to photograph at each of them. The first few days were spent along the Tuolumne in a place where a short hike led to a beautiful bowl of smooth granite slabs interrupted by some trees and stained by seepage from a band of reddish rocks above. In some ways this might have seemed like a tricky spot to photograph since it is in the bottom of a canyon and the light is blocked to the east and somewhat blocked to the west. But I like the indirect light found in shaded areas after dawn and before sunset, so I went back to this area on at least three days to photograph in this diffused, soft light.

The rocks are part of a large area of granite slabs that this non-geologist assumes were carved and smoothed by glaciers traveling down from the peaks above the Tuolumne area. In this spot the formations include large areas of smooth and curved granite surfaces, areas that have been pock-marked by erosion and water, cracks of various sizes ranging from incipient to gigantic, and trees and other plants growing anywhere they can find footing: tiny cracks, larger cracks like this one, collections of sand and debris in low spots, and so on. I came back to this tree and some of its neighbors several times and came to think of it as the “bonsai tree.”

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lone Tree, Autumn Snow

October 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun shines on a lone tree on a rocky ridge after early autumn snow storm dusted the upper reaches of Bishop Creek Canyon, California.

This was the first clear morning after several days of early season snow in the Sierra Nevada. Earlier that morning I had driven the still unplowed road up to North Lake and photographed there for several (very cold!) hours, starting before sunrise. As the sun rose higher and I decided to drive back down the road, possibly to some lower elevation groves that are first hit by morning sun at a later hour. The road leaves North Lake and makes a few twists as it descends toward a long traverse of the hillside above the valley holding the town of Aspendell.

As I crossed this section of the road, two things happened. First, and somewhat oddly for a semi-isolated gravel road on a snowy day, a number of vehicles came up the road at about this time. This forced me to pull out alongside the narrow road and allow them to pass – after which I watched several of them get stuck on the slippery road just above my pull-out point. This, of course, brought the traffic to a dead stop while the flat-landers figured out how to drive their fancy AWD (!) vehicle on snow. Second, as I stopped here I caught sight of this interesting tree slightly below and off to the side of the traverse, on a hill still covered with fresh snow and backed by the shaded talus slope on the other side of the valley. Being stuck for a few minutes anyway, it seemed like a fine idea to take the camera and tripod out again and photograph the tree while waiting!

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

Tree in Granite Bowl, Sunset

September 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree near the base of a granite bowl is illuminated by sunset light, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph in an area alongside the Tuolumne River where large expanses of granite slabs tilt down almost to the river itself. This is a wonderful place for photography: subjects here include everything from the river itself to the granite and the trees and other plants, the light ranges from colorful light reflected from nearby cliffs to sunset and sunrise light to the soft pre-sunrise and post-sunset light.

I had been photographing some larger trees and some trees and plants growing from narrow cracks in the solid rock, but as the sun dropped to near the horizon and the light’s color warmed, I moved over to an area where a line of larger trees marches up the slope between two expanses of granite. From here I spotted this small and stunted tree growing out of nearly solid rock and with a background of curving granite slabs occasionally interrupted by the odd boulder. The photograph was made in just about the very last light of the evening is it slanted across the rocky scene, and the “golden hour” light intensified the subtle colors of the rocks.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: needles

Trees, Granite, and Afternoon Haze

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Tree and Stained Granite

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Lone Tree, Autumn Snow

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Tree in Granite Bowl, Sunset

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

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