Leaves, wet from morning frost, litter the ground near the banks of the Merced River
During my recent visit to Yosemite Valley to photograph autumn subjects, I kept seeing a particular stand of very small cottonwood trees growing densely close together near the Merced River. They were in a spot with somewhat tricky lighting, and the first few times I saw them the light was not ideal, so I filed the subject away mentally and figured I would come back and shoot them in the right light. Eventually, I returned, and although the light was still not ideal for the photograph I had in mind – and did not make yet on this trip – I decided to walk out to the trees and take a look and perhaps make a few close-up photographs.
None of the trees are taller than perhaps fifteen feet and some are only a couple of feet tall, but they grow together densely. (My hunch is that in some future decade when they mature only a few of them will survive.) I began by photographing groups of their vertical trunks from outside the grove, looking for interesting relationships among the forms of their trunks and for a few spots where a solitary leaf was still stuck in the branches of a tree. Then I walked into the grove, looking at the trees themselves and at the ground below, which was some combination of dew-soaked and flattened grass mixed with the leave that had fallen from the trees.
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
“Autumn Leaves, Reflection of a Monolith” — The face of El Capitan is reflected in the surface of a autumn leaf-filled pool along the Merced River
A book could be written about this photograph, but I promise to keep it shorter than that. The book would include chapters on the role of luck in photography, the importance of patience, knowing places well, looking at things other than the most obvious, not forgetting to look at the obvious as well, the pleasure of finding like-minded friends in such places, the importance of wandering around slowly, and more.
Every autumn, right around the end of October, I like to go to Yosemite Valley to photograph fall subjects. This mostly means the fall colors of cottonwoods, black oaks, big leaf maples, and dogwood trees – though it also includes the beautiful brown, rust, golden, and tan colors of autumn meadows. It also includes the magical fall light of the Sierra. I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on just what it is that makes this light so special, but I am certain that it is different. When the timing works out just right – as it did on this visit – the first snows of the season might have fallen, and there will be at least a dusting along the rim of the Valley. The Valley slows down in other ways at this time of year, too. The visitors to the Valley are different. There are fewer in general, and especially there are fewer of those who might seem to be checking another goal off the list, and more who genuinely know and love the place. Only the committed – or the poor and RV owners – stay in campgrounds, so you can just show up and get a camp site. Interestingly, although there are far fewer people, I’m much more likely to run into folks I know, which seems to be one of the special pleasures of this recent visit.
As I photographed during this trip, I more or less followed the light and my intuition around the Valley. I might get an idea to go shoot some subject, and along the way I would find something else worth shooting… and many other things worth remembering for a later visit. One of the things on the mental list was a single isolated dogwood tree sitting back in a dark section of forest off to the side of the roadway. I passed it several times, each time thinking about coming back and photographing it, and I finally made it there late on my final day in the Valley. I parked – and no one else at all was around – picked up my gear and walked off into the woods. This light in the shadows along the base of the Valley cliffs changes very slowly, so there was no hurry to make a photograph before light went away and I just poked about slowly, looking at the tree from various angles and considering other subjects in the area. I made a few photographs, and just as I finished a car pulled up and I saw that it belonged to a couple of friends.
I wandered back over that way and after the requisite wise cracks and good-natured insults we realized that all three of us had the same idea to photograph on the other side of the road among trees along the river bank. So, still moving at a relaxed pace and talking as we walked, we headed off towards the river through trees and brush. Along the shoreline I came to a spot where a few leaves littered the surface of the water in a tiny, still cove along the edge of the river. This familiar granite monolith stands not far away, and I found that I could, if I put tripod feet in the water, get both the leaves and its reflection in the frame. I made a few photographs and then wandered off to photograph leaves and grass and some trees and more of the river. Eventually, the light began to fail, and I climbed a small hill and started back to my car through the trees. I happened to look up – yes, sometimes I forget to look up for a moment – and saw that the intense sunset light was striking the granite… and it occurred to me that I might just barely have time to get back to that spot where I had photographed earlier and put those leaves into the reflection of this transformed scene. Fortunately, I knew exactly what lens to use, what aperture to set, and where to locate the tripod, so I could move quickly and efficiently to make the photograph before shadow rose from the bottom of the cliff.
The golden leaves of a small grove of autumn aspen trees against the rolling hills of high desert sagebrush country
As I have photographed the beautiful autumn color displays of the eastern (and not so eastern) Sierra Nevada aspens, I have thought more about variations on this location theme. There is no question that there are very beautiful aspen trees up high in the eastern Sierra, and I go there every fall to photograph them. There are high elevation stands of interestingly twisted smaller trees, dense stands in lower and sheltered areas, some examples of big stands of tall and straight trees, and more. I have some favorites that I return to every autumn, and I still find new ways to see them and photograph them.
However, I’m also starting to think more about some slightly different opportunities for aspen photography that aren’t all that far from these familiar places and which present the trees in slightly different ways. I’d rather not get too specific at this point, so I’ll just say “think east.” This particular group of trees isn’t all that far east, but it has some of the characteristics that I’m interested in exploring: a narrow band of colorful trees set against a more open and barren essentially high desert landscape. Here the trees seem to tend to grow in (mostly) smaller groups, and in some ways they almost seem more special for being a bit less dense and for growing it what seems like a more difficult environment.
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
Bridal Veil Creek rushes and curves through boulders and forest, Yosemite Valley
This photograph has been sitting quietly in the RAW file archive for five years. I made a note to myself last year to go back and revisit it, and I left the note sitting on my computer desktop… but didn’t get back to it until this week.
This is a fairly classic Yosemite Valley scene, I think, being along the banks of Bridal Veil Creek not far below the famous waterfall with the same name. As I usually do, I had made a spring trip to the Valley to photograph during the period of high water and green foliage and had probably just indulged my tradition of arriving in the Valley and standing in the spray of this waterfall before getting down to the business of making photographs. I considered a color rendition of this photograph, with the subtle colors of the rocks and the water, but decide to go with a more “classic” black and white image – and, yes, I thought about some specific photographs by certain well-known photographers of Valley subjects that also focus on densely complex scenes with lots of details, a type of photographic challenge that I enjoy.
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
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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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.
