I saw this little architectural vignette when I took an impromptu side trip up a set of stairs while walking around downtown San Francisco. I’ve been to and photographed the general location — near Moscone Center — in the past, but that wasn’t my plan this time. Near the top of the stairs I happened to notice a bit of wall with a combination of soft colors and hard angles. The colors were the first focus of my attention, but as I looked at the scene more closely I noticed that squares are everywhere, small and large and interlocking with one another.
Tall trees on top of a granite ridge, Yosemite National Park
This has been a period of unprecedented drought in California as a whole and particularly in the Sierra Nevada. In the fourth of this series of drought years the Sierra is showing the strain. Creeks have stopped flowing, lake levels are significantly low, trees are under stress and dying throughout the range. This summer the annual wildfire season began much earlier than usual, and many fires spread quickly and took longer to contain. We certainly saw all of these effects during our week-long photographic sojourn in the Yosemite backcountry. Until we had a couple of days of (welcome!) rain near the end of the trip, the smoke was a major factor. On many days we had smoke so thick that we were concerned about our health, and the pall often made photography somewhat challenging. Fortunately, even on the smokiest days there were times when it was clear, too.
However, it is possible to see how to make photographs even in smoky conditions. On the plus side, some smoke can soften the light a bit, and the haze can enhance the atmospheric recession effect, which can emphasize the distances between subjects in front of the camera. The haze in this photograph comes partially from wildfire smoke. Here it muted to sometimes-difficult highlights on the granite, and it softened and muted the distant forest across the valley.
Still waters of a lake reflect Cathedral Range granite patterns, Yosemite National Park
This is likely to be the first in a somewhat large group of photographs made during a recent weeklong stay at a backcountry Sierra Nevada lake with friends and fellow photographers Charlie Cramer and Scot Miller. The two of them are part of a larger group of photographers who have photographed annually in the high Sierra, most often in Yosemite, for about the past 15 years. I’m a more recent hanger-on, first tagging along on my own perhaps a half-dozen years ago, and then participating more fully for the past three years or so. The typical plan is to pack in to a scenic backcountry location, set up a base camp, and then photograph the heck out of the area for a week or so. This approach has all kinds of advantages — too many to completely describe them here — including the ability to watch for perfection conditions or to return to a location and refine a vision of the subject over a period of days.
Near the start of the trip I saw this little area where vertical rocks meet water near the edge of a lake. My first photographs were OK, but just OK. However, I knew the spot had potential given the right water and light conditions. I watched the area each time I passed it, always watching for those better conditions. I got them on this day, when the water had become almost completely still, producing a more coherent reflection of the lichen-covered rocks.
Landscape photographer Charlotte Hamilton Gibb works the summer evening light along the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park
This photograph was one result of a wonderful set of coincidences in the Yosemite high country. I had gone up to the Tuolumne Meadows area for a few days of photographing mid-July. I arrived midday, managed to get a campsite, set everything up, hung out a bit… and it was time to figure out what to photograph in the late afternoon and evening. As sometimes happens, especially on the first day of such a trip, when I’m still working my way back into “the zone,” I didn’t have a plan. So I decided to simply get in my vehicle and head back to the west along Tioga Pass Road and look for some interesting potentials in the light and the scenery. At one point I caught a glimpse of some interesting light on trees and I quickly pulled over into a clearing at the side of the road. I noticed two other cars already there and a woman getting out of one of them, and I thought “I hope I’m not annoying her.” Then I realized that she was a friend and her husband was parked one car up. Claudia and Michael and I exchanged greetings and quickly decided to join forces and head out across the meadow.
As we crossed to the other side I saw another couple, one with a serious looking tripod, who seemed to be following us. we paused at the far side of the meadow and they caught up — it was Charlotte and her husband. Now the party was becoming larger! We headed slowly downstream, talking and watching for subjects, finally arriving at a spot where the river twisted through a few turns and granite slabs lined the banks. Each of us went to work on our particular views of the spot, and I made this photograph of Charlotte, focused so intently on her photograph that she was unaware that I was photographing her.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
