Tag Archives: park

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Kearsarge Pinnacles

September 17, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon like on alpine lakes, meadows, and forest below Kearsarge Pinnacles, Kings Canyon National Park.

Kearsarge Pinnacles shares its name with (Kearsarge) lakes and a (Kearsarge) pass just to the west of the Onion Valley trailhead. This is not exactly an untraveled spot in the Sierra, given that it is merely one day in on a reasonable (by east side standards) pass and that it provides access to some very popular areas of the Kings Canyon back-country and to the John Muir Trail.

I’ve been over this pass a number of times. I’ve come in this way to start trips north over Baxter Pass and south into the upper Kern River basin and over Mt. Whitney. I exited here some years back on the ninth day of a trip that started at Bishop Pass and crossed a series of JMT high passes including (in addition to Bishop) Mather, Pinchot, and Glenn passes.

Here late afternoon light, filtered by clouds, illuminates the granite benches and scattered trees above a couple of the upper lakes in the basin. Despite the obvious impressive beauty of this location, I find that it presents some photographic challenges, at least when I try to photograph “grand views” of the area and the surrounding landscape. One of them, at least in my experience, is that the light angles can be a bit tricky. For example, as the sun sets it isn’t quite far enough north to light up the slopes of the pinnacles, and some of the interesting foreground subjects go into shadow as the light warms up. On this evening I made one of those timing discoveries that I’ll have to remember and apply the next time I’m there – from about the location of this photograph there was a minute or two of very interesting light right on the upper edges of the closer ridges… which I wasn’t quite quick enough to capture!

This photograph is 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: Sierra Nevada

Sunset, Unnamed Lake and Great Western Divide

September 16, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A boulder sits in the still water of an unnamed sub-alpine lake in the Upper Kern River Basin as the sunset light streams over the Great Western Divide.

This photograph comes from a week-long pack trip with a group of friends into the southern Sierra Nevada, this year’s installment of our ongoing annual back-country trips. After crossing over 11,760′ Kearsarge Pass and then 13, 200′ Forester Pass we entered one of my favorite parts of the Sierra back-country, the high plateaus of the upper Kern River basin. This area is surrounded by peaks rising as high as 14,000’+ in almost all directions and the view is expansive because much of the area is a very high plateau with nearly level areas at and above 12,000′.

I have been in this general part of the Sierra many times, going all the way back to my college days when I came over Forester Pass for the first time. On this year’s trip we followed the usual John Muir Trail route down to Tyndall Creek and camped there on day 3. From here we decided to spend the next couple of days exploring a little-visited area to the west where the Kern River has its source and just below the impressive peaks of the Great Western Divide. The lake in this photograph is one of several beautiful but unnamed small lakes in the area in which we camped. Peaks of the Great Western Divide are beyond as sunset light streams between them.

This photograph is 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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City

High Line Park and IAC Building

September 15, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People taking a summer evening walk along the High Line Elevated Park in Chelsea with the IAC Building and the 100 11th Building in the background, New York City.

I only spent a short time on one evening walking along the High Line Park, but I certainly found it to be an intriguing place, and one that I intend to visit again. I first stopped to photograph this spot when I saw a couple of musicians performing on the bench just beyond the people walking and standing in the foreground. But the “urban landscape” of buildings beyond is obviously very striking, especially in the evening light. I cannot identify all of the buildings in the photograph – my first attempts to find them via Google maps failed because the buildings are so new that you only see empty space and construction sites there. I finally determined that the building on the left with the “swooping” lines is the IAC Building, designed by Frank Gehry – which is obvious in retrospect. The taller building in the background (which I had taken to calling the “Mondrian building”) is the “100 11th” building, designed by a French architect named Nouvel.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Walls and Building Near High Line Park

September 14, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brick walls and a building under construction above the High Line Elevated Park, New York City.

Another bit of architecture photographed from the High Line Elevated Park in Chelsea on a summer evening in August. The most interesting features of this evening included the “mackerel sky” clouds to the west, which are reflected in the windows of the upper building, and the warm light of early evening. The juxtapositions of angles and textures (especially the bricks and the glass windows) got my attention as we walked along the High Line. I cannot identify the building, but it appears to be under construction.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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