Tag Archives: pine

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

Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset

June 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Trees at Olmsted Point are silhouetted against a brilliantly colorful spring sunset sky, Yosemite National Park.

I think everyone should occasionally get to post a just plain gaudy color sunset – and this is mine. While photographing Mount Conness from Olmsted Point was my primary goal on this evening, I also had some opportunities to swing the tripod around and point at other things from time to time. This is about as close as I can come to capturing the nearly hallucinogenic color of the sky as the brightest cloud illumination was centered directly overhead and beginning to move off to the west.

The color saturation was so intense that I had to under expose this by at least a stop in order to avoid blowing out the red channel and in order to retain some differentiation among the various shadings of color as they transitioned from very pink/red through orange and purple and on towards blue.

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

Two Trees, Morning Light, Pywiack Dome

June 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun illuminates two gnarled trees at the base of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park

I should begin by acknowledging that I sort of think of these as being “Charlie’s Trees,” since I first saw them in a marvelous photograph by Charles Cramer during a visit to the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley. The photograph was tucked away in an inconspicuous place up high above a doorway, but it caught my eye immediately. I knew right away from the composition and the quality of the light that it was Charlie’s work.

On the morning of the day after Tioga Pass opened this year, I had gone early in the morning to a spot just below this location, planning to photograph the high water of Tenaya Creek near where the creek from Cathedral Lakes joins and where the combined flow was flooding the meadow below Pywiack Dome. Finishing with that subject, I decided to head back up toward Tuolumne. Almost immediately as I passed by the base of Pywiack Dome, I could see that the morning sun was beginning to come around the shoulder of the dome and strike these trees and that the background of thicker forest and snow was softened a bit by haze and backlight. Very conscious of not wanting to recreate another photographer’s composition, I decided to use a long lens and let these two old and weathered trees fill the left half of the frame.

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

Mount Conness and Lower Young Lake, Sunset

June 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Alpenglow lights Mount Conness above Lower Young Lake in the Yosemite National Park back-country.

I was recently going through a large portion of my archive in search of a variety of photographs of Mount Conness, a well-known peak along the northeast edge of Yosemite National Park on the crest of the Sierra. This is perhaps not the best known peak in Yosemite for most people – they are obviously going to be far more familiar with the cliffs and domes around Yosemite Valley or with Mount Lyell (the tallest peak in the park) or perhaps Mount Dana (second highest peak, and towering above the Tioga Pass entrance.) Mount Conness is found a bit further “north” along the crest, and while it may be less known, it is certainly no less visible once you know where to look. You can see it in the distance towering above Tenaya Lake if you stop at the iconic Olmsted Point overlook. It is visible from many places along the road to Tuolumne Meadows. Once you get away from roads and into the high country it can be seen from almost any high point with an open view in the direction of the peak, including places like Vogelsang High Sierra Camp.

This photograph was made on a quiet late-season evening at Lower Young Lake, a place that I return to frequently, most of the time in the off-season when fewer people are there and the fall colors of the high country are starting to appear. The peak (and many other features in this area) are beautifully illuminated late in the day as this high ridge is open without obstruction to the west. The light on the peak was magical on this evening, being colorful and contrasting with the higher and more drab clouds, but not being as gaudily bright as it can be on other evenings.

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

Young Trees and Meadow, Tioga Pass

June 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Young trees grow along the edge of subalpine meadows at Tioga Pass, Yosemite National Park.

This meadow, right below Tioga Pass – which is among the trees in the saddle in the upper part of the photograph – is something of a magical spot in the Sierra. It is, of course, the highest point that you can drive to in the park, and it sits right on top of the crest of the Sierra Nevada. At just slightly less than 10,000′ of elevation it is verging on the true alpine zone. Because of elevation and location, it is only open for a few months each year between roughly the end of spring and generally some time in November. (For those of us who think of this as it looks in summer, it is sobering to remember that during the majority of the year it is a cold and snow-covered place.) Once you pass over Tioga you begin to descend into the very different world of the high deserts east of the crest. Yes, it still feels like the high country for a while, but within miles you are in hot dry places that are not at all like this alpine terrain.

Oddly, while a thin band of trees crosses the saddle at the pass, much of the area on either side is meadow. This section is on the “Yosemite side,” and is an extension of the many meadows along the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River which drains this area around Mount Dana. As if to reinforce the idea that this is not as gentle a place as it may appear in the summer, parts of the meadow are filled with the bleached remains of trees struck down by avalanches from the ridge that is out of this photograph to the left. The trail to the summit Mt. Dana, of the second-highest peak of Yosemite (being a few feet shorter than Mt. Lyell), begins by crossing this meadow.

Although I drive over this pass with some frequency, I virtually always stop and get out of the car and look around for at least a moment. On this late-July visit I stayed more than a moment, spending a good portion of an afternoon wandering about the meadow and photographing these young trees, small streams and ponds, fallen trees, some of the more distant mountains, and much else.

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