Trees and Granite, Morning. Yosemite National Park, California. July 27, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light shines on the trees clinging to massive granite domes in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was the result of an odd little sequence of events. While driving along Tioga Pass Road in the afternoon I looked more closely at an area that I have passed by many times and noticed that it was filled with glacial erratics, “loose” boulders left behind when glaciers retreated. It seemed like these boulders might be an interesting subject and since they were in a position where morning light seemed likely, I made a mental note to return in the morning over the next couple of days and see what I could photograph here.

The next morning, after photographing at dawn nearby, I decided to go to this spot and see what I could come up with. I arrived without a specific idea in mind beyond the plan to look around and see what I could find. My first idea was to photograph the boulders themselves, and I did make a few mediocre exposures of individual boulders and groups of boulders. As I played around with this idea I noticed that the light slanting across granite slabs a bit to the north of me looked interesting, especially since this light was also side- and back-lighting some of the trees. So I turned my attention to this potential subject.

Working with this idea I gradually became less interested in the boulders and more interested in the trees of the lodgepole forest that extended beyond the slabs, so I found a somewhat higher spot to shoot from and made a series of exposures that included layers of backlit trees extending beyond the granite. Beyond the trees was the base of Pywiack Dome, a subject that I have worked with a number of times in the past. Now I looked a bit higher than the forest that led my eye to the dome, and I photographed the boundary between the forest and the base of the dome. (Producing, I might add, a really, really boring photograph!) Looking a bit higher I saw the solitary tree near the lower left of this photograph, and I made a vertical exposure that included mostly just the tree and the expanse of granite above and around it. (This photograph will be here in a few days.) They I thought I would try a landscape orientation photograph, and as I worked with this I got the idea to include the right face of the closer granite dome against the darker shape of a more distant cliff. And, finally, I found this photograph.

(There is also a black and white version of this photograph. The text accompanying that version talks a bit about the black and white versus color issue.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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