Tag Archives: nevada

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

Shoreline, Forest, Morning

December 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light and forested shoreline reflected on the surface of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

It is way past time to share this photograph — it has been sitting here since I made it back in July! The location is a familiar one to those who visit the Yosemite high country and drive across Tioga Pass Road, but sometimes I do stop at those iconic locations and make a photograph, especially in a quiet and uncrowded morning like this one.

Lakes like this one are among the places that often make me wonder if visitors have any idea what they are missing. So many people, for practical reasons or because they don’t know better, come to such places in the middle of the day or in the afternoon. While they are certainly beautiful at any time, these locations are almost (but not quite always!) at their most beautiful at the very beginning and very end of the day. Lakes like this one are often completely still at dawn, sometimes with a bit of fog rising from their surface, and the surroundings are usually quiet and uncrowded. Even in a spot like this one — where I can assure you there were crowds later in the day — I can have the place virtually to myself.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens, Early Autumn Snow

November 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Snow from an early autumn storm dusts the high peaks above Eastern Sierra aspen trees

I made this photograph on an early autumn morning, on a day with conditions that were either difficult or special, depending on your point of view. After several days of photographing aspen color in the Eastern Sierra, this was my final morning of this particular trip. The weather had mostly been “nice” — perhaps a bit unusually so for this time of year, but in line with the pattern of California drought that was now in its fourth year. But on my last night of this trip an early fall storm blew in, and overnight it snowed lightly on my camp.

Looking at this as an opportunity, I was up early in the morning. I headed up higher into the mountains where I knew there would be plenty of the aspen color that I had photographed during the past few days, but now altered in appearance by this “interesting” weather. It was cold enough that light snow was sticking on the higher peaks, and at my elevation it was that raw kind of weather that is windy and just cold enough to “try to snow.” The overcast softened the light, bringing more illumination to shadows and intensifying the autumn colors.

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

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

Seepage Stains, Cathedral Range Granite

November 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Water seepage stains the surface of a Cathedral Range granite face, Yosemite National Park

During our week camped at a Yosemite back-country lake in September we had plenty of time to become intimately aware of the surrounding landscape, to explore its features, and to return to some of them more than once. One photographer who wasn’t with us this time but who has been a fixture on these trips in the past (Hi, Mike!) and shared some general information about a particular feature that intrigued him — and as a result the rest of us also became intrigued by it. The description of the location was a bit vague, but not so vague that a person who knows the area well would be unable to find it. (Think of directions like, “Near some granite to the south of a lake and west of another lake.”) So, once on the scene, this area was one that caught our focus.

Up from where we were camped, through some trees, and near the base of an incline, there is an odd section of cliff. In the sort of spot where you might expect everything to have been ground away by ancient glaciers there is a section of cliff that is hundreds of feet long and perhaps no ore than thirty feet high. A basin lies above it, and it seems that water finds many places to seem over and through these rocks, staining them in all sorts of diverse and amazing ways. This photograph is one of several close up studies I did of small sections of this face, where solid, blocky granite is cut through by cracks and water stains are everywhere.

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

Grove of Bare Aspen Trees

November 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few autumn leaves linger on a grove of bare aspen trees, eastern Sierra Nevada

No, I’m still not done with my photographs from autumn 2015 in the Sierra Nevada! This year I first photographed this grove in late September, much earlier than would normally be the case. Even then many of the trees had already lost their leaves, seemingly in response to the fourth serious drought year in the Sierra. The drought affected trees in a variety of ways, ranging from early color change to simply dropping leaves without a color change to seemingly going dormant. (Other trees that were less stressed seemed to change later than usual, perhaps in response to later warm temperatures resulting from climate change.) I was less than satisfied with those first late-September photographs of these trees, so I thought more about them after returning home and made a plan to return the following week and refine my ideas.

And that’s just what I did. I made this photograph one week after those first images. This time I spent less time at the grove since I already had a fairly clear idea of what I was trying to produce. Given how few leaves there had been the week before, I was somewhat surprised to find any color still left here — but I was also happy that there was some! Bare and near bare late-season aspen trees seem compelling to me, for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on. Is it that they signal the fine, incontrovertible end of the warm season? Or is it that they signal the certain arrival of the beauties of winter? Perhaps there is something about these bare trees standing in groups and their promise of new life the following spring? When there are still just a few colorful leaves remaining, as in this scene, somehow the effect seems even stronger.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: nevada

Shoreline, Forest, Morning

Aspens, Early Autumn Snow

Seepage Stains, Cathedral Range Granite

Grove of Bare Aspen Trees

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