Tag Archives: pink

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

May 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

I encountered this scene a short distance up the trail from the Temple of Sinawava area in Zion National Park, in the area below the start of “the Narrows.” Here the canyon of the Virgin River becomes quite narrow, eventually narrowing so much that the river often spans its entire width. These young trees, which were just beginning to show their spring leaves, are in along a slightly wider section where the river curves, and just be flooded during times of high water. Beyond, the river and the canyon twist right, left, and then back to the right again between the steep sandstone walls.

I’m always intrigued by trying to photograph these scenes of very dense foliage in which the frame ends up filled with a huge amount of detail. It is a challenge to try to create anything like an effective composition out of this complexity, and I think it is even more difficult to make such photographs “work” in the small presentation necessary for sharing on the web.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

May 23, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

New spring leaves appear on cottonwood trees along the Virgin River in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park.

This is a type of photograph that I enjoy searching out – though it is also a type that can be difficult to present effectively in online jpg form, given the amount of fine detail that is present. The challenge is in trying to capture both the dense complexity of the thick foliage and the complex patterns of rock – and these things fill the frame completely – and still try to find some sort of compositional logic that might still be visible in the end. In general, I think these things work better in fairly large prints.

The scene is along a section of the Virgin River in Zion Canyon of Zion National Park. A trail continues up the canyon beyond the point that is accessible via the park service shuttles. Here the canyon gradually narrows, and thickets of young cottonwood trees grow on the valley floor in what I believe must be the sediment left behind by floods. The canyon itself becomes a bit more convoluted, twisting right and left around the vertical sandstone walls. For much of the day there is little or no direct sunlight at the bottom of the canyon, and that was certainly the case during the time when I made this photograph.

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

Manzanita Plants in Bloom

May 8, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Spring manzanita flowers, Yosemite National Park, California.

The manzanita plant and its pink blossoms are ubiquitous in California – and, I imagine, in other places as well. I photographed these on a bit of granite slab in Yosemite National Park in mid-April, just as the (meager, this year) spring snows were melting away and spring growth was starting, at least in this exposed spot that is open to the western sun.

This might qualify as a bit of an “accidental photograph” – a photograph that came about as the result of some combination of finding myself somewhere for some reason, getting distracted by some other thing than what I came for, and then noticing yet another subject while photographing the first distraction! This particular photography day was one of those during which things were “difficult.” I had gone up the Yosemite area for single day, with some ideas about photographing California poppies and redbud in the Merced River Canyon outside the park boundaries. I arrived in that area in the early morning and photographed some blooming redbud plants, but poppies weren’t really an option because they don’t open until they get the brighter sunlight that comes to these parts of the canyon a bit later in the day. So, mid-morning arrived and I sort of felt like I was more or less done for the morning in the canyon, so I drove up into The Valley looking for whatever. I found a bit of “whatever” in the form of some dormant trees along a stretch of the Merced, but then the light went flat, I was tired, and I wasn’t “seeing it” – so I parked the car and took a nap! (This was perhaps necessary given my 3:55 a.m. wakeup time.) A bit later the light was still not inspiring me – hey, it happens. I killed a bit of time by visiting the Yosemite Renaissance show in the Valley, and then driving off to visit another potential subject… that turned out to not work in the light of that particular late afternoon. In case you are starting to think that this sounds like a pretty sad and disappointing story… I’ve learned to be philosophical about it when I run into “blah” conditions or otherwise am just “not seeing it.” I really do understand that the counterpoint to those moments when something astonishingly beautiful happens in the landscape are those other moments when less astonishing things are all that I can find. In any case, after my drive to this other unsuccessful subject, I turned back toward the Valley and as I descended toward Wawona Tunnel I decided to stop at a turn out before the tunnel that provides an impressive view of the Valley. I stopped. The view was impressive… but still not worthy of a photograph. But I looked across the road and saw a possibly interesting little rivulet of melt water running down a crack in a granite slab, so I hoisted my gear and wandered over there to see what I could do with this subject. While photographing this feature, some clouds obscured the sun and made for temporarily poor light so I looked around a bit while waiting for the light to return, spotted thick bunches of manzanita flowers nearby that I had overlooked before, and went over and photographed them in the soft, cloud-filtered light.

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

Green Hills, Rose Light

April 28, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Subtle colors illuminate a ridge top and sunset clouds in the Sierra Nevada foothills, California.

This is yet another virtual “happy accident” photograph. I posted a different version of it earlier, but it may have been long enough that I can tell the story again. I had been in Yosemite Valley and surrounding areas for the day, and late in the afternoon I left The Valley to head into Merced Canyon where the redbud and California Golden Poppies were blooming. The plan was to get into the canyon while there was still sun in the sky but at a time when lengthening shadows would bring some soft light to various deeper/steeper sections of the canyon. So I shot there until a bit less than an hour before sunset and then decided to head on home, starting the long drive back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

I headed down the canyon, still unable to completely stop looking at the newly green grasses, the plants that were starting to leaf out, and the profusion of purple redbud blossoms and bright orange California Poppies spreading up some of the steep hillsides. But as beautiful as much of this was, I wasn’t seeing photographs in it, so I continued on. Soon I reached Briceburg, where the road leaves the Merced and climbs steeply as it heads toward Mariposa. Climbing this steep section I continued to glance back over my shoulder at the green, chaparral-coverd ridges behind me and the clouds above them that were beginning to pick up a bit of sunset color. As I neared the top of the climb I almost kept going – doing the internal debate between it might make an interesting photograph and I’m hungry and I want to start home! – I passed a photographer set up beside the road, and I quickly recognized him as a friend. Now I had no choice but to stop, so I did a u-turn at the first turnout and headed back down the hill to where he and his wife were. I grabbed my gear, said “hi” as I set up, and figured that I might as well make a few final exposures of the delicately colored sky and the subtle tones that the last light imparted to the upper ridges.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: pink

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

Spring Cottonwoods, Zion Canyon

Manzanita Plants in Bloom

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