Morning light on trees in and around Ahwahnee Meadow, Yosemite Valley.
This little grove of trees might be one of the best known groves in Yosemite Valley. It sits apart from other trees out in Ahwahnee Meadow, and it can be an appealing site at various times of the year – in spring when the new leaves are bright green, in winter when the meadow and the trees may be snow-covered, and in fall. I made this photograph at the very end of October when the leaves had begun to change to fall colors and the meadow grasses had gone dormant. I had arrived here very early – before sun rise – and shot for a good hour or more in ground fog conditions. As the morning wore on the layer of fog thinned and finally disappeared completely just before I made this photograph. At about the same time, higher clouds around the rim of the Valley that had blocked the earlier light began to thin and the stronger light hit the meadow and the trees.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Evening fog drifts among forest trees on the floor of Yosemite Valley.
One more “misty Yosemite Valley” photograph – though perhaps not quite the final one just yet. This is similar to a photograph I posted earlier – another black and white image of evening fog floating among the trees of Yosemite Valley as seen from Wawona Tunnel View. The traditional and iconic scene from Tunnel View is impressive even in bland conditions, but photographing “that view” in such conditions is not a promising activity. But that wasn’t my plan. Noting that it had just rained for a day and was beginning to clear, I was pretty confident that this evening fog would form and begin to drift over and through the forest. My plan was to be at Tunnel View not to photograph El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, and Half Dome – which didn’t cooperate in the end anyway – but to point a very long lens downward toward the mist.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
A faint rainbow briefly glows in dawn light on the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada above the Buttermilks as an autumn storm builds.
Since I wrote previously about acting on a hunch to be in this spot in time to catch a few minutes of dawn light, I won’t recount the whole thing here – though I would like to describe the phenomenon a bit more and perhaps make a point or two about light and opportunities.
The photograph is of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada above Bishop, California and was made on an early autumn morning of a day that brought one of the first winter-like storms of the season. I found myself in this spot (as described at the link) for the very few minutes during which this light was present – and afterwards the light was simply gone and the rest of the day was overcast and rainy. The circumstances have me thinking about a few things about light and “being there” at the right moment.
Sometimes, even on a “poor light day” – though I like overcast conditions! – there can be a few brief moments of exceptional light. Catching them involves some combination of anticipating that these moments might occur, being there, and – let’s admit it! – dumb luck. In this case, all three were at work. I did not know that this light would occur, but I knew that the conditions offered a possibility. A clearing in the clouds along the eastern horizon allowed a horizontal beam of light to briefly hit the mountains right at dawn. It began by striking the clouds above the Sierra crest, soon hit the highest peaks, moved across the face of the range, and within minutes the show ended with light on the high desert. The band was so narrow that only one of these subjects was generally illuminated at a time – and the whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than five or ten minutes.
That description might make it sound like I’m saying that I’m just plain great at predicting such things and planning to be there. Not quite! If you had asked me a few minutes earlier, when I made the spontaneous decision to abandon my previous plans and high-tail it out to this spot, what the odds were that I’d see light like this I might have estimated them at perhaps 10% or less. In other words, if I repeated this little adventure 10 times, I’d guess that I’d fail to see light like this nine out of ten times. However, if I only go for “sure bets” (which I’ll take when I can get them!) I know that I’ll miss lots of special conditions that are not subject to prediction.
Which brings up the subject of luck. I often read that one should be able to know in advance what the photograph will look like, and that careful and full preparation will lead to good photographs. Well, sort of, but maybe not quite in the way that some imply. (There is an element of “preparation” in all of this that I’ll write about eventually, but that is a different thing.) Frankly, these subjects are too complex and too fleeting and too unpredictable to be subject to that sort of careful and precise planning in any sort of consistently useful way. The photographer cannot make that small band of open sky appear along the horizon on an autumn morning when a storm is building along the crest – but if everything goes right a photographer might be there at the right moment, prepared to make a photograph of it.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Fall colors and mist along the Merced River, Yosemite Valley.
Returning to the land of color – after a spate of recent black and white posts – this is a photograph made on a rainy day along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley, as fall color came to the trees and bushes and fog drifted along the walls of the Valley. This photograph was made from the bridge near Curry Village as it rained lightly and the colors were reflected in the calm surface of the river. Probably because of the damp weather and the relatively early hour there was hardly any one else around, and this in a location that is often quite busy.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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