Tag Archives: nevada

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

Shoreline Mist, Autumn

September 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog drifts above a Sierra Nevada lake surrounded by the colors of autumn

This is perhaps an example of a photograph that required me to point my camera the “wrong” direction. I was at a very popular aspen photography destination in the eastern Sierra Nevada, where early color was developing quite nicely even in late September, perhaps a week earlier than usual. There are a couple of standard photographs that almost everyone makes at this location, but since I did those some years ago I’m usually not interested in re-doing them now. (With truly exceptional conditions I would relax that notion a bit and rush right back to the standard place and make photographs!) So when I go back here I now tend to poke around a bit and see what else might be possible there.

So I started this morning by climbing to a location from which I had not photographed before. From that vantage point I saw a few other possible angles on the subject, including some from the far side of the lake. I soon headed over there and as I looked back toward my original location I saw that a low haze was back-lit along the edges of the lake. I’m a complete sucker for both mist and backlight, so I pointed my camera almost straight back into this light and made a few photographs of the grassy area along the lake’s shoreline and the trees, both aspens and conifers, rising beyond.

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

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

High Country Aspens

September 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of autumn aspens in front of receding conifer forest and rising slopes near Sonora Pass on a Sierra Nevada fall evening

Although I’ve driven across Sonora Pass for years, I feel that I have perhaps neglected its photographic potential, perhaps because it is somewhat out of the way for me on many of my Sierra trips — the major Tahoe area routes are farther north, and my favorite trans-Sierra route further south is Tioga Pass through Yosemite. I have photographs from the base of the pass on the east side, but my collection of photographs from the highest reaches of the pass is very small. With this in mind, I decided to return from this trip to the eastern Sierra by way of this pass, and I timed the traverse for the late afternoon when I thought the light might be idea.

Although this pass is not quite as high as Tioga Pass, it has a much more alpine feeling. The road is very steep in places and frequently quite narrow as it twists and turns up and down and around trees and boulders. I recall once thinking many years ago that driving this pass is about as close to the feeling of hiking the high country as one can get on a road. There are a lot of aspens along this route, but in many places they are mixed in with the conifer forest, making them a bit more difficult of a photographic subject. Finally, perhaps a couple miles east of the pass, the terrain opened up to high forests and meadows and I found a few beautiful aspen groves standing apart.

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

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

John Muir Trail, Yosemite

September 25, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The John Muir Trail crosses Cathedral Pass near Cathedral Peak on a late-summer morning

Late in the season in the Sierra backcountry the population begins to change. During the high season of July through Labor Day, when passes are usually clear of snow and when people are in the middle of their summer vacations, the backcountry is filled with backpackers of all sorts, though quite a few are weekend visitors out of a few days. The through-hikers are there, but they are outnumbered by the other folks. After Labor Day things begin to change, and I have a sense that a greater percentage of the backpackers are of the “serious” sort — the people who are out for longer trips, who are covering greater mileage, and who may visit some of the more out-of-the-way locations. Our photography trip into the Yosemite backcountry was during this period, and out camp was on a section of the John Muir Trail, so quite a few of these “hard-core” hikers passed through. (I enjoy talking to them, since I’ve been across almost all of the trails they were traversing.)

One morning I got up, as we always do on these trips, before dawn. I gradually worked my way up through a rocky forest/meadow behind our camp, climbing toward a saddle not far above our location and photographing along the way. Shortly before the saddle I caught sight of an actual trail heading up there, and I quickly figured out that it was the portion of the JMT that ran past our lake. I arrived at the saddle before the sun had risen far enough to light the beautiful meadow that extended beyond it, but knowing that the light would soon slant across the pass I set up and picked some possible compositions. Here I made a conscious choice to “document” this bit of the JMT as it crossed the pass and headed off toward the distant peak, and right as the first light bit the trail I made a series of photographs.

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

Subalpine Lake, Dusk

September 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk comes to a Sierra Nevada subalpine lake on a rainy evening

Near the middle of September three of us spent a week camped at one Yosemite back-country lake, photographing the lake and its surroundings every day in a range of conditions. At times we dealt with this summer’s extremes of wildfire smoke, which was occasionally so thick that it almost seemed like fog and it made breathing difficult. But each day, even on the smokiest days, the wind picked up and it cleared out enough to make photographs — some days the early morning was clear and the smoke drifted in later, while on other days we started out with murky conditions and then watched them clear.

A bit to our surprise, on the last few days a weather front came through and we had much more “interesting” weather — rain, wind, hail, graupel, and clouds swirling around the nearby peaks. On this evening the clouds were gathering — it would rain later that night — and patterns of lighter and darker clouds filled the sky above our lake. Late in the evening, as the light was beginning to fail, I walked a short distance from my tent, set up along the shoreline, and mad some photographs of this mysterious scene in the fading light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: nevada

Shoreline Mist, Autumn

High Country Aspens

John Muir Trail, Yosemite

Subalpine Lake, Dusk

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