Tag Archives: park

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

Spring Torrent, Impossible Tree Fall

June 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

An early spring snow-melt torrent flows over Impossible Tree Fall, Yosemite National Park, California.

This photograph takes me back to last year in mid-June, on the day that the Tioga Pass Road opened for the season. That was a very different year than this drought year! Back then the pass opened very late – though not the latest ever – and in mid-June there was still water, snow, and ice everywhere! One of the special treats of crossing the pass on the first day of the summer after a very wet winter is that the landscape comes alive with flowing water. Water is on the move almost everywhere. Rivers are full to their banks and beyond, waterfalls flow across almost every cliff, and there are creeks everywhere, including places that you might never have imagined they would flow when you visited later in the season.

This small cascade flows very close to Tioga Pass Road, tumbling down over boulders and a series of small benches and ledges. One of the most notable features is the single tree growing right in its path, seemingly “impossible” not only because its roots seem attached only to bare granite but also because it grows in the middle of a seasonal waterfall! I came upon the fall a bit later in the morning, when the rising sun was just barely topping the ridge above the waterfall, sending light down across the slopes and backlighting the tumbling fall.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Trees and Evening Sky

June 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees silhouetted against cloud-filled evening sky, Yosemite National Park.

The last time I posted a photograph of more or less this scene, the colors were so bright that you almost needed sunglasses! The photograph was made on an evening that ultimately turned into one of the most astonishingly colorful ones I have experienced in the Sierra – and I have experienced a few! Although that evening began with what most might regard as extraordinarily unpromising light – murky haze and overcast – I had an idea that these might be just the conditions in which the sun drops below the edge of the clouds far to the west just before sunset and then lights the clouds from beneath, a situation that can suddenly turn the sky into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of colors.

Eventually that is just what happened. But this photograph was made just before that show began, or perhaps during the very first stages of it when it was not at all certain what might develop. There were high, thin clouds in the sky to the west, and they began to glow a bit with evening backlight, so I lined up this little group of trees on the granite slabs and photographed them in silhouette against the sky. A few minutes later… it was not going to be time to be making black and white photographs!

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Rock Garden, Atmospheric Haze, Morning

June 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Black and white photograph of a rock garden of sandstone towers in morning light, backed by atmospheric haze and barely visible La Salle Mountains, Arches National Park.

So far, each time I’ve thought I was hitting the end of the photographs from my early April weeklong trip to Utah, I come up with another one… and another… and another. I still have a few more waiting to be posted, but those are photographs that I had already worked up but held off posting for one reason or another. This one, however, may be the final one to actually emerge from the collection of exposures from the trip. (But I make no promises! There is one more that features some reflected light inside alcoves in sandstone that still may work.)

This photographed ended up in black and white for several reasons. I was sort of leaning that direction when I made the exposure, since the color components of the scene were both difficult to work with and a bit less than exciting. In addition, I like the way that black and white can sometimes abstract the shapes of things, perhaps taking them a few degrees further from their “real” nature. I had stopped alongside the road between the Windows Area and Wall Street as I begin my exit from Arches National Park on my last morning of shooting there. There was a lot of haze, especially when looking into the light, as this photograph does. The backlit haze is thick enough that the snow- and forest-covered La Salle Mountains, which actually fill the upper part of the frame, all almost impossible to see, and the foreground features gradually lose contrast as they progress away from the camera. However, because the light is in front of the camera and coming from just out of the right side of the frame, the edges of the rock towers gain a bit of extra definition against that hazy background.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Formations, Morning

June 4, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light illuminates fins, towers, cliffs and ridges in Arches National Park, Utah.

After the better part of a week photographing in Utah in early April, the day came to start the long drive back to California. But on the last morning I rose very early and made one last trip up from Moab into Arches National Park to photograph in the morning light. I started up on the ridge around the Windows area, looking for suitable sandstone formations to frame the setting full moon. (Still not sure whether or not the photographs of that subject are going to be share-able or not – we’ll see!) From there I headed back toward the Petrified Dunes area from which a panoramic view of many subjects is available – the towers and spires and arches up on the ridge near the Windows, the La Salle Mountains in the distance, and the huge sandstone formations down in the Wall Street area.

This photograph includes a more distant view of the latter area. Most often I think we view these features from close up, and look up at them from below. And when we are close to them we are more likely to consider one or perhaps a couple of them at once. However, from this elevated and more distant vantage point, the individual features and formations are seen more clearly as part of the larger landscape. From front to back there are first some isolated sandstone features standing alone and apart. Beyond them are the walls of the, well, Wall Street area, which are largely intact but have eroded away in some areas. Next there is a narrow canyon, in shadow in this photograph, and beyond that a wider and more solid wall running down from left to right. This one is thicker and there is a bit of a plateau on top where it appears that plants grow. Then there is yet another valley, another ridge, and the sequence continues on beyond the upper edge of the photograph.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: park

Spring Torrent, Impossible Tree Fall

Rock Garden, Atmospheric Haze, Morning

Sandstone Formations, Morning

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