Tag Archives: pink

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

Stones, Stained Granite

November 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Granite stones rest on glaciated slab of stained granite near the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

Scared you, didn’t I? Thought I was going to miss posting a daily photograph, right? Yeah, both of you… ;-)

In any case, I may have mentioned previously that I’m a sucker for Sierra granite, especially the glaciated kind that is found almost everywhere you go in Yosemite National Park, from the Valley to areas surrounding the very highest peaks. (Some of the highest peaks escaped the glaciation themselves, but that’s a longer story for another time.) For me, some combination of glaciated granite slabs, a few “erratic” boulders (“erratics” being boulders moved from their source and left behind by retreating glaciers), some trees, and a bit of meadow grass, perhaps with a stream or lake nearby shouts “Sierra Nevada.”

This photograph does not include all of these Sierra ingredients but it does include the granite. I photographed this small bit of granite slab along a section of the Tuolumne River than runs through the back-country during a week-long backpack trip this past September. Something about the arrangement and color of the four larger stones against the water-stained underlying rock with its complex textures interested me. A lot of what is in the frame may not be visible in the small jpg version posted here, but there is a lot of detail in the frame: the texture or rock, crystal structures on some of the stones, several smaller pebbles, even a bit of dried pine needle.

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

Tree and Stained Granite

November 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree grows from a crack in red-stained granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Back in mid-September of this year I joined a group of five other photographers for a bit more than a week of photography in the High Sierra back-country of Yosemite National Park, going out along the Tuolumne River and spending some significant time in two locations and having several days to photograph at each of them. The first few days were spent along the Tuolumne in a place where a short hike led to a beautiful bowl of smooth granite slabs interrupted by some trees and stained by seepage from a band of reddish rocks above. In some ways this might have seemed like a tricky spot to photograph since it is in the bottom of a canyon and the light is blocked to the east and somewhat blocked to the west. But I like the indirect light found in shaded areas after dawn and before sunset, so I went back to this area on at least three days to photograph in this diffused, soft light.

The rocks are part of a large area of granite slabs that this non-geologist assumes were carved and smoothed by glaciers traveling down from the peaks above the Tuolumne area. In this spot the formations include large areas of smooth and curved granite surfaces, areas that have been pock-marked by erosion and water, cracks of various sizes ranging from incipient to gigantic, and trees and other plants growing anywhere they can find footing: tiny cracks, larger cracks like this one, collections of sand and debris in low spots, and so on. I came back to this tree and some of its neighbors several times and came to think of it as the “bonsai tree.”

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest, Dawn

October 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Dawn light falls on the snow-dusted summit of Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest above Bishop, California.

On this morning I paused along highway 168 on my way to photograph fall aspen color in the Bishop Creek Canyon area to photograph the first light on the Buttermilk Range and along the section of the Sierra crest near Mt. Humphreys and Center Peak. My main reason for stopping here was to photograph the Buttermilks, the rocky hills along the giant “fan” rising from Bishop toward the base of the escarpment of the eastern Sierra. The plan was to find a good vantage point, put a long lens on the camera, and then pick out various features of the range as the edge of the first light hit them.

With that in mind, I was set up here before dawn and standing around in the cold morning air waiting for the light to arrive. Obviously, before the dawn light can get down to the elevation of the Buttermilks it must first hit the peaks of the crest, and who can resist that kind of light? The very first light that just touched the tip of Mount Humphreys, near the right side of the frame, was almost too intense in comparison to the shadowed lower slopes, so I continued to wait until the light, still very saturated with color, illuminated the full upper faces of the crest and began to light up the lower peaks to the east.

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

Tree in Granite Bowl, Sunset

September 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree near the base of a granite bowl is illuminated by sunset light, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph in an area alongside the Tuolumne River where large expanses of granite slabs tilt down almost to the river itself. This is a wonderful place for photography: subjects here include everything from the river itself to the granite and the trees and other plants, the light ranges from colorful light reflected from nearby cliffs to sunset and sunrise light to the soft pre-sunrise and post-sunset light.

I had been photographing some larger trees and some trees and plants growing from narrow cracks in the solid rock, but as the sun dropped to near the horizon and the light’s color warmed, I moved over to an area where a line of larger trees marches up the slope between two expanses of granite. From here I spotted this small and stunted tree growing out of nearly solid rock and with a background of curving granite slabs occasionally interrupted by the odd boulder. The photograph was made in just about the very last light of the evening is it slanted across the rocky scene, and the “golden hour” light intensified the subtle colors of the rocks.

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