Tag Archives: nevada

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline

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Reflections, Rocky Shoreline
Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

NOTE: This original interpretation interpretation of this photograph has been superseded by a later version found here.

A group of us recently spent a week camped at 11,000′ in a landscape of water, glaciated rocks, meadows, and high peaks. AS the week went on we gradually pushed out the boundaries of our photographic explorations. My first view of this formation was on my initial scouting trip to this lake — I did not photograph it on that visit, but I made a mental note to return when the light would be more ideal. In this case, “ideal” meant “not in full sun,” so my plan was to come back in the early morning and evening hours. Early morning turned out to be best since the air was still at that hour, leaving the water still enough to produce coherent reflections.

I returned a few mornings later. Demonstrating once again the importance of what I might term “attentive serendipity” in photography, even though I got distracted and arrived at the lake later than planned, the timing turned out to be nearly perfect. I had a few minutes to photograph the larger landscape in the pre-sunlight “quiet light” before moving on to photograph this still-shaded scene. And once I finished here, the sunlight cooperated by arriving at a nearby rocky peninsula and both backlighting a tree and turning the water a lovely deep blue color.

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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: Sierra Nevada

Ridge, Last Light

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Ridge, Last Light
The last evening light strikes the top of a Sierra crest ridge

Ridge, Last Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last evening light strikes the top of a Sierra crest ridge.

As a photographer of landscapes I like to think of myself as being something of a connoisseur of sunsets. Hey, I’ve seen a few of them! There is not denying that it is a special time of the day, just like dawn, when the landscape undergoes a rapid and often striking transformation, made more notable against the backdrop of daytime light that changes very slowly. As the day comes to an end the changes accelerate — shadows lengthen, the sun approaches the horizon or other blockage, the color of the light warms, and distant clouds and other features begin to affect the local scene. Quickly the light disappears, leaving some alpenglow if you are lucky, and then the transition slows again as darkness falls.

Over several evenings it became obvious that this ridge above our camp was the last one to get the sunlight. Since we were camped to the east of the Sierra Nevada crest, there was little full-on sunset light here. However, given the curved shape of the upper canyon and the high peaks on the crest, there were a few spots like this one that were open to the light coming from far to the west. On this evening some clouds assembled above the ridge, creating a more dramatic backdrop.

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 and Amazon.

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Locations, Sierra Nevada Fall Color

Sierra Nevada Fall Color – Coming Soon!

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This is an We’re just weeks away from Aspen Time as I write this eclectic and incomplete account of how I photograph Eastern Sierra Nevada fall aspen color. (Originally posted in September, 2009, and updated and slightly revised in varying degrees during successive aspen seasons — current update for fall 2019. Check the comments for other updates and notes. )

California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra
California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra

My fall color guidebook: “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra“ is available from Heyday Books. Order from Heyday Books and from Amazon. The book greatly expands and updates information in this article and elsewhere on my website. (Contact me directly, too — I may have some autographed copies to sell.)

Fading Autumn Color
Fading Autumn Color

During the latter part of August every year there always seems to be a day in the Sierra when I become aware that summer is coming to an end and fall is just around the corner. I’ve never quite identified the source of the feeling, but it is unmistakable when it happens. Perhaps a change in the light? Possibly something about the patterns of the wind? Maybe just that more and more places dry out and shift from green to brown and golden?

Of course, sometimes it is more obvious. I was in the Sierra during the final week of August in 2009, backpacking into Yosemite’s Ten Lakes Basin for a few days. It wasn’t hard to notice that the corn lily plants were dying and that many had taken on wild yellow/gold colors, or that some of the small meadow plants were beginning to turn red and yellow, or that some of the chaparral plants were losing a few leaves. By early September 2014 I was already seeing some aspens starting to pick up autumn color in a few places. When I revised the article in 2015 this day arrived early — we felt it during the first week of the August, perhaps due to the strange California weather that year. As I update this once again in 2019… it arrived later, following a very wet winter, spring, and summer, with wildflowers still blooming in early September!

So even when it is still summer by the calendar – and will be through most of September – my thoughts turn to fall once again. And that means I’m looking forward to the opportunity to photograph the incredible displays of aspen color in the eastern Sierra. (There are some aspens west of the crest as well – for example in the Carson Pass area – but the stands east of the crest are larger and more accessible.)

Since I’ve been visiting and photographing the aspens for some time, here are a few ideas and recommendations and locations for photographing them in the eastern Sierra. In no particular order:

Continue reading Sierra Nevada Fall Color – Coming Soon! →
Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Glaciated Terrain

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Glaciated Terrain
A Sierra Nevada scene including glaciated slabs, a shallow lake, and old moraines

Glaciated Terrain. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Sierra Nevada scene including glaciated slabs, a shallow lake, and old moraines.

There are quite a few “terrains” in the Sierra Nevada, ranging from foothills oak grasslands through the mid-elevation forest, and on up to the rocky alpine heights. Off all of them, I think my favorite is that found just below the treelike, where granite slabs are frequently interspersed with small trees and meadows, where you are rarely very far from water, and where evidence of the glacial heritage of the range are everywhere. There is virtually no element of this scene that doesn’t owe something to those glaciers — the smoothly rounded slabs of foreground granite, the lake lying in a scooped-out hollow where glaciers converged, the moraines (at least two of which appear in the photograph), and even the line between the tops of the glaciers and the more jagged formations that remained above their reach.

This photograph is also about light, and a more subtle form of it. I composed the scene to exclude as much of the direct morning sun as possible, but yet to take advantage of its presence nearby. One of the favorite forms of light among photographers is that which is reflected into the scene from nearby objects in bright light. Here much of the warmer colored light is of that sort, reflected into the scene from nearby slopes that were already in the direct morning sun. This light fills shadows and can add soft color to the cold tones in the shadows.

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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