Tag Archives: olmsted

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

Trees, Granite, and Sky Near Olmsted Point

July 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunset light on a trees and weathered granite slabs above Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

This is another “opportunistic photograph” made on my way back home from a three-day mid-September backpacking trip in the eastern Sierra. We had finished up at the McGee Creek trailhead around 3:00, gotten cleaned up, headed into Mammoth Lakes for a celebratory post-trip Mexican dinner, and I found myself on the road back toward the Bay Area close to 5:00 p.m. I figured that this might well get me over Tioga Pass close to 6:00 p.m. and allow me to find some place with suitably interesting subjects and light before the sun went down. I crossed the pass on schedule, then passed through Tuolumne Meadows (where I had photographed a few days earlier), and decided that it would be a good idea to go a bit further west – and a bit closer to home! – before stopping to shoot.

Most of the interesting light was gone when I got to Tenaya Lake, so I figured I might as well head up to Olmsted Point and see what I could find. Obviously, the classic “back side” view of Half Dome is there, as well as the view back toward Tenaya Lake and Mount Conness. I stopped and picked out an “insurance” shot of Half Dome, though the light initially didn’t look all that spectacular. While talking to some other visitors I missed a bit of lovely light on Conness, though I probably didn’t have a long enough lens anyway. (I was traveling light, with only the limited set of equipment that I take backpacking.) However, besides the obvious there is quite a bit of other interesting stuff to see right around Olmsted, especially late in the day when the last light slants across low ridges to the west and picks up bits and pieces of the landscape – a tree here, a rock there. This little vignette was high on the granite slabs above Olmsted, and as a bit of late light glanced across the rocks and trees, an angled bit of cloud passed by, mirroring the angle of the ridge.

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

Granite and Trees, Morning

May 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Morning light on granite slabs in the Yosemite high country.

These are the light, the rocks, the trees that bring me back to the Yosemite high country of the Sierra Nevada every year when Tioga Pass opens and which keep me coming back until the high country closes again in the fall. Tioga Pass opened for the season this past weekend, and that – plus the chance to see a show and visit with some friends in the Valley – was excuse for a quick visit. I try to go over the pass each season on the day it opens or shortly afterwards. For me, crossing that pass and starting down the road into Lee Vining Canyon marks the start of “summer,” even though the calendar still says it is spring.

Since the high country camp grounds are not open yet and the Forest Service camps east of the pass are also still closed, I ended up getting a last-minute camp site in Yosemite Valley. (This also provided the opportunities to attend the reception for John Sexton’s and Anne Larsen’s show at the Ansel Adams Gallery, to hear John’s wonderful talk about Ansel Adams that evening, and to get one last crack at photographing this year’s dogwood bloom.) On the first day I did little more than make an obligatory drive up toward the pass and see the familiar country. This was the second dry winter in a row in California, and there is very little snow for such an early date in the season. Perhaps because of this, there were far fewer people up there than on other recent opening days. On the second day I got up well before dawn and left my Yosemite Valley camp in darkness, driving up Tioga Pass road early enough to photograph in the May Lake (turnoff), Olmsted Point, and Tenaya Lake areas in early light. Here I found what I was looking for – sparse trees in the back-light from early morning sun, ridges of exfoliating granite, and a bit of hazy morning atmosphere. I suppose it might just be my first high-country photograph of the new season.

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

Half Dome, Dusk

September 21, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Half Dome and lone tree at dusk, from Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

Last week I was making the long drive back over the Tioga Pass Road from the “east side” following a short pack trip up into McGee Canyon. After catching an early dinner in Mammoth, I headed north and then up over the pass, crossing into Yosemite about an hour before sunset. I figured that this would give me one more chance to do a quick bit of photography before calling it quits and focusing on the drive back to the Bay Area. Since I had spent some time earlier in the week shooting in the Dana Fork meadows and in Tuolumne Meadows itself, I decided to continue on and just see where I might end up a half hour or so before sunset.

It turns out that the “where” ended up being Olmsted Point – not exactly an original place to shoot, but what the heck! In the back of my mind, of course, was the possibility of shooting the classic “back side” view of Half Dome if the evening light proved interesting enough. So one of the first things I did was scope out the precise spot where I wanted to shoot that subject a bit later. Then I turned my attention elsewhere. It turns out that there are quite a few other interesting things to photograph here: the trees across the road on the large glaciated dome, the trees below the parking area, sparse trees growing along ridge tops all around, side light from the setting sun, and much more. So while waiting to see how that Half Dome thing might develop, I shot a bunch of other subjects, all the while watching the evolving light down towards The Valley. At first it didn’t seem all that interesting. The light was a bit flat, perhaps due to cloud cover to the west, and the potentially interesting overhead clouds had a bit of a strange color cast. However, I suspected that after the sun set that there might be some interesting glow on the face from the west, and that the clouds still might pick up some interesting color. And, in fact, this photograph was made when the sun was no longer shining directly on Half Dome – instead it was illuminated to that “after glow” of the sunset as the very last sun began to color the streaming clouds beyond.

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

Morning, Near Olmsted Point

August 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light on granite and sparse trees near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park

This is another photograph from 2011 on a late-July trip to the Yosemite high country along Tioga Pass Road. The photo was made in morning light in the general area of Olmsted Point, where a series of granite domes and ridges lines up roughly parallel to Tenaya Canyon and in the morning the brightly back-lit haze can create a sense of spatial depth and mute the details of the formations further away.

I suppose that backlit trees like this one are a bit of a theme for me – yet another Sierra subject I cannot resist photographing! The central tree is, obviously, just one of many thousands of trees right here but since it was the closest one it served as my subject. The tree is set in granite slabs topped with glacial erratics left behind when the last glaciation ended, and the slabs are mostly very solid, making the it all the more amazing that such a large and upright tree can grow here. Another ridge rises in the middle distance, and beyond it yet another ridge whose details are nearly invisible in the morning light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: olmsted

Trees, Granite, and Sky Near Olmsted Point

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Morning, Near Olmsted Point

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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.