Tag Archives: peak

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

John Muir Trail, Yosemite

September 25, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The John Muir Trail crosses Cathedral Pass near Cathedral Peak on a late-summer morning

Late in the season in the Sierra backcountry the population begins to change. During the high season of July through Labor Day, when passes are usually clear of snow and when people are in the middle of their summer vacations, the backcountry is filled with backpackers of all sorts, though quite a few are weekend visitors out of a few days. The through-hikers are there, but they are outnumbered by the other folks. After Labor Day things begin to change, and I have a sense that a greater percentage of the backpackers are of the “serious” sort — the people who are out for longer trips, who are covering greater mileage, and who may visit some of the more out-of-the-way locations. Our photography trip into the Yosemite backcountry was during this period, and out camp was on a section of the John Muir Trail, so quite a few of these “hard-core” hikers passed through. (I enjoy talking to them, since I’ve been across almost all of the trails they were traversing.)

One morning I got up, as we always do on these trips, before dawn. I gradually worked my way up through a rocky forest/meadow behind our camp, climbing toward a saddle not far above our location and photographing along the way. Shortly before the saddle I caught sight of an actual trail heading up there, and I quickly figured out that it was the portion of the JMT that ran past our lake. I arrived at the saddle before the sun had risen far enough to light the beautiful meadow that extended beyond it, but knowing that the light would soon slant across the pass I set up and picked some possible compositions. Here I made a conscious choice to “document” this bit of the JMT as it crossed the pass and headed off toward the distant peak, and right as the first light bit the trail I made a series of photographs.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin

Evening Shadows, Mono Lake

January 26, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening shadows fall across the western shore and islands of Mono Lake

The landscape of Mono Lake, near Lee Vining, California, provides a stark contrast to the Sierra Nevada just to the west. From the alpine ridges of the Sierra along and just north of Yosemite, the eastern slopes of the range drop quickly to Lee Vining and the broad valley beyond. The lake sits in a dry basin that has no outlet, so the water simply (for the most part) evaporates.

The lake is huge, stretching far to the east beyond Lee Vining. The landscape of the lake is simple, partly because the surrounding area was once submerged when the lake was much larger than it is today. Far in the distance is Boundary Peak and the ridge of the White Mountains. The sun sets early here, since the tall peaks of the Sierra raise to the west, and in this photograph deep shadows are already angling across the western shores of the lake.

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: Sierra Nevada

Mount Humphreys, Dawn

January 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This photograph is from a spectacular landscape in the eastern Sierra above the town of Bishop, in what is sometimes called “Buttermilk Country,” or just plain “the Buttermilks.” Here the land rises steadily from the Owens Valley lowlands, first gradually, then building into the eroded and rounded rocky hills like those catching the sun in the center of this photograph, and finally culminating in the alpine peaks of the Sierra Nevada Crest. The tallest peak in the photograph is Mount Humphreys.

As is typical in autumn, I was in the eastern Sierra to photograph fall color — which mostly means aspens. My recollection is that we started up toward the mountains from Bishop very early in the morning, before sunrise, and then decided that the dawn light on the eastern face of the Sierra offered more possibilities than yet more aspen photographs — besides, the aspens would still be there after this sunrise light was gone! We left the main road and followed gravel tracks to this spot with its view of foreground hills and Sierra crest peaks just as the dawn light show began.

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

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

December 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

I’ll say good bye to 2014 with a few sunset photographs this week. Recently I had reasons to go back through over a decades worth of photographs, including many that I have not shared. While this is certainly work, it is also occasionally a source of wonderful surprises — as seeing the older photographs triggers memories of photographic adventures that I haven’t thought about for a while and as I “discover” photographs that have sat in the raw file archives for many years. They get left there for a range of reasons. Sometimes I just didn’t yet “see” them the right way at the time I made them, or in other cases I got busy before I finished working my way thoroughly through a set of images and I moved on too soon. (This may be yet another reason to be conservative when it comes to deleting “unneeded” files!)

This photograph came from the very end of several days of photographing fall color in the eastern Sierra. It was a special few days, as there was light snow and wonderful color for most of the time I was there, and these conditions had me shooting around the clock, from before sunrise until it was too dark to make more photographs. On this final day I did some shooting in the eastern Sierra near Lee Vining in the late afternoon and finally decided that I was finished and that it was time to start back home through Yosemite. In the early evening light I headed up Lee Vining Canyon toward Tioga Pass, and as I drove by Ellery Lake I found these lovely conditions: new snow on the ground, golden hour light on the peaks and reflected in the surface of the lake, a nearly full moon rising above the shoulder of the high peaks, into blue sky slightly streaked with thing lines of clouds, and the complex symmetries of curving ridges. I couldn’t have asked for a better benediction to mark the final photographs of this trip.

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: peak

John Muir Trail, Yosemite

Evening Shadows, Mono Lake

Mount Humphreys, Dawn

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

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