Tag Archives: northern

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

Granite, Forest, and Lake

September 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

View of rugged northern Yosemite terrain of forest, lakes, and peaks, as seen from the top of a glaciated granite ridge

I went exploring on this evening, checking out the spine of this glaciated granite ridge above the lake where we were camped. It was only a short walk, first along the forested shore of the lake, then up the gradual incline of smooth granite benches and over a few bits or broken terrain to the top. This wasn’t the highest point around, but it was high enough, and it was full of trees that would catch the evening light as the day came to an end.

This is quintessential high Sierra scenery. Underfoot is glaciated granite, topped with glacial erratic rocks and boulders left behind when glaciers retreated from this area thousands of years ago. The granite has weathered, and where sand and plant material collect in pockets and cracks plants have managed to take hold, ranging from small grasses to rugged trees. Below the granite ridge the soil is thicker and forest trees grow around a subalpine lake. The terrain drops off into the canyon of the Tuolumne River on the other side of the lake and in the distance are the high, alpine peaks of the Cathedral Range.

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Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Morning Light, Redwoods

August 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Light beams shine between redwood trees, Muir Woods National Monument

During essentially the entire month of July, in what is typically my prime time for being in the Sierra and other wild places doing landscape photography, we were instead traveling in the UK, Germany, and Austria. It was a great trip – and I’d do it again in a heartbeat! – but I’ve missed my natural world here in California, and it was about time to return to it. So I marked the first day of August by getting up well before the crack of dawn and heading north across the Golden Gate to spend a morning in the cool and quiet of redwood groves. (To those who have been to Muir Woods when it is, as is too often the case, overrun by tourists from San Francisco, I’ll just say that if you go very and on the right day, you can briefly have the place almost to yourself.)

I was the first or perhaps second person to arrive at Muir Woods, well before the gates were open and the kiosks manned, so I loaded up the camera gear and ambled slowly into the park, taking in the cool air, the quiet, and the soft early morning light. I had to particular photographs in mind, so I just took the time to go slowly and look around. In the end, I came back with perhaps four that I like – which is a pretty good haul! – and the others might be just a bit less iconic than this one. I made this photograph at just about the time I had decided that my work for the morning was done – the sun was getting high in the sky and creating the hard-to-photograph “pizza light” and more visitors were starting to show up. As I turned around to start back I saw this small grove above on the hillside, with some light beams passing through the branches, so I switched lenses and made this photograph.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Sunset Clouds

July 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of geese passes above sunset-lit clouds over northern California

I made this photograph on what turned out to be, no surprise to me, my last migratory bird photography day of this season. (And a productive season it was!) In April the climate begins to shift strongly toward spring conditions in California and in this drought year that meant that not only did it warm up, but places that might otherwise remain wet were already drying out. I started the day at a wildlife refuge where I frequently photograph the birds, especially Ross’s Geese, and was fortunate to begin the day with some classic light Central Valley fog that gradually cleared as the morning wore on. After shooting for a few hours I came to that midday time when migratory bird photography isn’t as great as it is at the edges of the day – a time when one might think about how to kill the next few hours until the light again becomes conducive to photography. I spontaneously decided to not spend it waiting here but to instead drive a good distance north to another place I’ve photographed in the past but which I hadn’t visited this season.

I took my time on this long drive. The route itself requires more than an hour of driving, but a few side excursions added considerably to that. I pulled off the highway to investigate one small town that I hadn’t been through before, and I drive a ways up a side road that crosses the Diablo Range heading west, finding the green spring grasses and some early wildflowers. Back on the main highway, I continued north to an areas where I have photographed cranes and other birds in the past, but in this dry year all of the water was gone and agriculture work seemed to already be underway. I decided to try another wildlife reserve that isn’t far away, and it turned out to still be relatively wet – but the large flocks of birds that I could count on back where I started my day seemed to not be here. I continued my search, eventually spotting the tell-tale white “cloud” that could only mean that a flock of geese was busy in a field a ways to the north, so I quickly drove over there to find a very large flock of snow geese, which I don’t generally see further south. After sunset, this flock of geese flew high overhead in the waning twilight.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Fog and Forested Ridges

May 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog envelops forested ridges near Mount Tamalpais on the Pacific coast north of San Francisco

I photographed this scene on an early February day when the atmosphere was especially murky north of San Francisco. I had traveled this way for the day with some very general ideas about photographic subjects, but once I got “there” quite a few of those ideas looked a lot less promising. I had initially thought about photographing inside the coastal redwood forest, but when I arrived at my intended location I found that everything was gray, gray, gray! The atmosphere was hazy and murky and high clouds blocked any interesting light from the sun. So figured I might try for something moody along the coast, but there I found the same very difficult light.

I finally headed back up into the Marin hills, hoping that I might get up above the thickest of the gray and possibly get some light filtered through the high clouds and perhaps some longer views. As I entered the Mount Tamalpais State Park and started to ascend the road toward the peak, I finally came out of the coastal fog – though the overhead clouds remained. As I went up this road I looked for spots with some sort of longer view of the fog bank from which I had just emerged, and I finally found it along a bend where the road passed an area of open meadows and rolling hills. Here there was a line of sight back toward the ocean – completely obscured by fog – and the bits of lower hills that were poking through the tops of the clouds. On a technical note, this is not a monochrome or black and white photograph. It is, however, somewhat desaturated. One of the side effects of this difficult atmosphere was a very blue quality to the light that became much more apparent in the photograph than it appeared to a viewer on the scene. I knew I would have to deal with this in post in order to get an effect that seemed appropriate and believable. My initial thinking was to actually make it a black and white photograph, but as I worked with the image I came to feel that it worked better if some degree of muted color was retained.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: northern

Granite, Forest, and Lake

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Morning Light, Redwoods

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Geese, Sunset Clouds

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

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