Tag Archives: park

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

Monterey Cypress, Cliffs

March 16, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Monterey Cypress trees growing at the edge of a rocky cliff above the Pacific Ocean, Point Lobos

It has been a very busy few weeks, for reasons I won’t explain here in detail. In any case, it was important today for me to head out and make some photographs. I originally had planned to go yesterday, but California’s strange weather wasn’t looking too promising, so I delayed for a day, hoping that the cloudiness that has been around might move further north. I was up early today and on the road, and while there were some clouds it looked like things might be a bit more interesting to the south by the ocean, so I headed towards the upper end of the Big Sur coast. (Usually I like clouds, but some types of clouds make for particularly challenging light.)

I arrived at Point Lobos within a half hour of its opening, which turned out to be critical as the place quickly became busy enough that they closed the entrance gates a few hours later! I started out in the Whalers Cove area and decided that I would walk along the north shore trail since I had in mind some photographs looking back towards this cove from higher ground. The light remained challenging for a while, but them changed to what can be a special sort of light, where high and thing clouds mute the intensity of the light but still give it a clear directional quality. This kind of light also fills the shadows better than more harsh light, and that allowed me to photograph the shady side of this rocky prominence topped with Monterey cypress trees.

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Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

March 15, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn aspen trees at the end of a meadow on the Kaibab Plateau

Back in the early autumn of 2014 I headed off to southern Utah for some significant time photographing — first on my own in the area around Kanab and points a bit east of there, then up to Capitol Reef to meet a friend for a few days, then out into a relatively off-the-grid area south of Escalante to photograph with another group of photographers, with a quick stop after that in the town of Boulder, and then west to Zion to meet family members for a few days. Whew! On my first day in Utah I ended up at a motel in Kanab, where I settled in by late afternoon. I originally figured it would be too late for photography, but I found myself with a few hours late in the day and no plans made. I looked at a map and saw the road heading south toward the north rim of Grand Canyon (where I had never been before — it is a long story) and thought, “what the heck, I’ll go to Grand Canyon!”)

I headed out of Kanab with a very amorphous plan to follow the road south, perhaps getting to the rim by sunset if I was lucky. I crossed the valley and began the climb up to the Kaibab plateau where, to my surprise, I found late season aspens along mountain meadows that still had some color. In the dusk light I stopped — I couldn’t help myself! — and made a few photographs of these slender, tall, and straight trees against the backdrop of bare aspens and the conifer forest beyond. (I eventually did get to the rim… but it was already deep in dusk when I arrived.)

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

Cottonwood Leaf, Dry Grass, Winter

March 13, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A single cottonwood tree lies among dry winter grasses in a Yosemite Valley meadow.

This has been and continues to be a historically dry year in California and especially in the Sierra. More concerning, it is the third such year in a row. In a more typical year — and may those return soon! — the location where I made this photograph would be very wet and perhaps even snow-covered on a day like the one when I visited.

We headed out into the Valley very early on this morning. It was the sort of day when you might hope to find some ground fog in the Valley meadows. We had no luck at the first two meadows we checked, but the third did have a very tenuous and shallow layer of fog, so we stopped. I wandered out into the dry and slightly frosty meadow, and as I did the last of the fog dissipated. As I looked for compositions among the waves of dormant grasses I began to notice that here and there were reddish-brown heart-shaped leaves left over from the autumn cottonwoods.

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

Yosemite Fall, Winter Mist

March 12, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Upper Yosemite Fall briefly appears through the mist on a winter morning

In Yosemite Valley for a few days at the end of February, I had the opportunity to wake up early and wander off into meadows before most of the Valley had awakened. The overnight forecast had included a small chance of some snow flurries and continuing snow in the morning, so I wanted to be “out in it” when and if it arrived. Around dawn I got up and walked out into the meadow near the swinging bridge. There was the tiniest bit of snow from the night before — so little that its faint trace was only to be seen in hollows and protected areas. As I walked through the meadow the sun began to rise and there was a five-minute snow shower as I set up my tripod and camera.

From where I stood I had an open view upwards toward the Valley cliffs, but I couldn’t see much. Heavy mists were floating along the upper reaches near the Valley rim, and for the most part I only was able to see bits and pieces of the formations through momentary windows in the clouds as they drifted by. One moment a ridge line or a pinnacle would briefly appear, only to be swallowed up again in the clouds. From where I stood I knew that Upper Yosemite Fall should be visible, so I pointed my camera that way, hoping for a muted and obscured view of the thing if the clouds cleared enough. And they momentarily thinned enough that I could see the upper rim of the Valley, the cleft where the fall leaps into space, and a section of its downward path behind the scrim of clouds.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: park

Monterey Cypress, Cliffs

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

Cottonwood Leaf, Dry Grass, Winter

Yosemite Fall, Winter Mist

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