Tag Archives: peaks

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Snow Flurries, Bishop Creek

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Snow Flurries, Bishop Creek
Snow Flurries, Bishop Creek

Snow Flurries, Bishop Creek. Sierra Nevada, California. October 4, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Light autumn snow falls on peaks above aspen groves along the South Fork of Bishop Creek

This is a photograph from a wonderful, short trip into the eastern Sierra about five years ago. I believe that I made two trips to the “east side” that fall to photograph aspens, and on this one (the first of the two) I had a couple of days of winter-like weather with clouds and snow. This could put a damper on photography… unless you share my fascination with “interesting” weather, in which case it seems like that best thing that could happen.

I came back from this trip with some very special photographs, mostly because I ran into conditions that were not quite so typical for Sierra autumn. The most typical Sierra day at this time of year starts cold but then becomes warm and sunny with the beautiful autumn light. I love those days, but I’ve seen enough of them to like some variety, too. And that’s what I got on this trip. On one morning it was so cloudy up high that I decided to drive down out of the range and shoot back up towards in the broken light of a stormy dawn. On this day I headed back up toward the high country and photographed aspen color against a backdrop of mountain peaks disappearing into snow showers.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Great Western Divide

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Great Western Divide
Great Western Divide

Great Western Divide. Sequoia National Park. August 2, 2010. © Copyright 2010 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sierra Nevada backcountry near the Great Western Divide

The back story to this photograph could end up being quite long, but I’ll try to constrain it a bit. First, credit to my friend David Hoffman, whose recent effort to share a bunch of his black and white photographs has inspired me to share a few of mine that haven’t been public before, and to go back to some older images that have languished in my raw file archives and do the work necessary to bring them to the light of day. This is one of those photograph, from a trip into a wonderful and remote section of the Southern Sierra that I undertook with group of friends over four years ago. The general area is one that I had long wanted to visit, since a strange college backpacking trip that had one of the lakes in the area as its objective, but which was derailed when my buddies and I realized that we were not up the rather intense trip we had embarked upon, and we ended up revising our trip in mid-stream — and we ended up many miles away from here. On this 2010 trip, many decades later, I finally got into this area that I had thought about during the intervening years.

The actual target destination on this 2010 trip was a particular alpine lake that I had been curious about since that original visit. We did go to that lake, a high barren lake above timberline, on this trip. Ironically, that destination from so many years ago did not particularly excite me when we got there — we stayed briefly and then moved on. But the place we ended up after that was very special. We looped into an area far up in the upper drainage of the Kern River, a location that is off the beaten track and clearly not visited that often. Our campsite near the location of this photograph showed virtually no signs of previous visits, a rare thing in the Sierra. This beautiful landscape of timberline lakes and meadows, perhaps my favorite sort of Sierra place, sits at the base of huge alpine canyons leading to massive and rugged summits. Fortunately, its remoteness and the difficulty of the approach is likely to sustain the solitude of the place.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sunrise, Capitol Reef

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Sunrise, Capitol Reef
Sunrise, Capitol Reef

Sunrise, Capitol Reef. Near Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. October 22, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn clouds about the peaks of Capitol Reef National Park

Finding sunrise light like this is a matter of getting up very early, making some decent pre-dawn guesses about what may happen later, finding a good location… and a whole bunch of plain dumb luck. Oh, and persistence helps, too — if you are out there a lot you will inevitably increase the odds that you’ll encounter the very special light. But no one can call up a small cloud centered above a ridge lit by first light that also turns the distant clouds shades of pink and purple.

Our primary plan on this day was to take a rather long drive down the east side of the park, though the ultimate goal was a bit fuzzy — it could have been a slot canyon I know of or it could have been a higher location that I had visited before. We started out in near darkness from our campsite, crossed the park, and then started south. As dawn approached, it was immediately obvious that the sky was just about to do something amazing, so we quickly found a spot with a panoramic view in most directions, stopped the car, grabbed cameras and tripods, and hurried to find compositions that might make use of this light. Since most of the interesting geological features seemed to be a good ways off, I put a very long lens on my camera and focused on small distant details. For a very brief moment, just as the first light began to gently wash over the high peaks of Capitol Reef, this intense color came to the clouds and one small cloud became visible against the lighter background.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

Morning Musings

(Belated) Morning Musings for 9/11/14

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OK, I am posting this “morning musing” in the afternoon, following last night’s late night return from a ten-day photographic adventure in the back county of Yosemite National Park, where I joined six other photographer friends to photograph some of our favorite subjects: rocks, trees, water, clouds, peaks, and that Sierra light. (All of the blog posts you might have seen from me since about September 1 have been “canned,” queued up in advance for automatic posting. I may not have acknowledged all comments that were left here while I was away… and I now have a thousand or more emails staring menacingly in my direction, demanding attention!)

The trip was wonderful — for the beauties to be photographed, of course, but at least as much for the company. Thank you Charlie, Karl, Mike, Keith, Scot, and Annette for being such great — and humorous — trail and photography friends and partners.

We were in the back county of the northern portion of Yosemite National Park. And, yes, we did encounter the effects of the fire still burning behind Half Dome and Clouds Rest, though from a relatively safe distance in our case. We were nowhere close to being evacuated, unlike those folks who were along the Merced River drainage in and above Little Yosemite Valley, some of whom were airlifted out ahead of the fire.

From our distant location we did see the fire begin on Sunday morning, when we saw a small bit of smoke that looked much like the many other small, seasonal fires that are common at this time of year. By midday the smoke had grown and was blowing our direction as the winds began to pick up. Late in the afternoon we encountered very strong winds and worried more about how they would affect this fire. The magnitude of that effect soon became clear, as within an hour of so a very thick smoke plume crossed over us, muting the sun and turning it a strange yellow-pink color, and soon began to see ash falling from the sky.

But we are all back, safe and sound, and with many images to review and begin to work on. Stay tuned!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.