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Web Publishing Experiment – Draft of the Next Death Valley Post

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I decided to try a little web-publishing experiment with part 2 of my series of posts on photographing Death Valley National Park – I’m sharing the draft publicly as I write it. I decided to try this for several reasons.

  • It is prime DeVa photography season now and for the next couple of months, and some people may find the information useful before I’m ready to release the final version.
  • There are lots of you who have DeVa experience of your own, and perhaps your comments and feedback may improve the post.
  • Maybe, just maybe, someone might be interested in watching the evolution of the post. I can flatter myself, right? :-)

To find out more take a look at the current version of the draft, where I’ve added a few words of explanation.

Dan

Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Rocks and Reflections, Merced River

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Rocks and Reflections, Merced River

Rocks and Reflections, Merced River. Yosemite Valley, California. February 16, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rocks and reflections from sunlit cliffs in the Merced River, Yosemite Valley, Callifornia.

This is a major re-working of a photograph I made last winter on a very cold morning in the Valley. I had been photographing nearer to the upper end of the Valley and as the sun rose higher I decided to head down toward Bridalveil fall to shoot in the border between sun and shadow. I was almost to Bridalveil and driving along a shaded section of the road (Southside Drive, which is normally not open to traffic headed this direction) when I saw an area of exposed rocks in a deeply shaded area with the surface of the river illuminated by the brilliant golden reflection from the fully sunlit cliffs above on the north side of the Valley. I found a marginal parking space alongside the road and set up with a long lens and looked for interesting compositions among the rocks.

There is a funny story to add to this. As I was shooting, as often happens when one sets up near a roadway with a "pro-looking" gear (hey, all it really seems to take is a tripod), other visitors began to pull over to see what the photographer was shooting, jumping out of their cars with cameras in hand. This in a very dark section of the canyon. With me using a very long lens. Pointed straight down at some boring rocks in the river. Waiting. For something. Quite a few of them just shook their heads, looked at me like I was nuts, got back in their cars, and drove on. :-)

keywords: California, Landscape, National Park, Place, Season, Travel, Winter, valley, merced, river, reflections, swirls, rocks, boulders, current, california, usa, travel, scenic, landscape, water, stock

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Ansel’s Tree

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Ansel's Tree
Ansel’s Tree

Ansel’s Tree. Yosemite National Park, California. June 16, 2008. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of the snag that is all that remains of the tree in Ansel Adam’s famous photograph from the summit of Sentinel Dome in Yosemite National Park

This is all that remains of the Jeffrey Pine atop Sentinel Dome that was the subject of the famous Ansel Adams photograph. Somewhere I even have my early attempts at trying to do the “Ansel Adams thing” with my black and white film camera when I was much younger — one or more photographs of this very tree, while it was still alive.

I photographed this close-up “portrait” many years after the tree died, while on a quick hike over to the summit of Sentinel Dome along the Glacier Point Road. Things changes slowly in the Sierra, but they do change. This is now, objectively speaking, another dead snag atop a Yosemite granite dome — however, this snag has achieved a sort of iconic status. Yet, perhaps there will eventually be another, maybe even the younger tree seen in the background beyond the dead stump.

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: Yosemite

Winter Grove, Yosemite Valley

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Winter Grove, Yosemite Valley
Winter Grove, Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. February 16, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

I’m always looking for different views of the famous – and quite obvious – subjects in The Valley such as Yosemite Falls. Here I was intrigued by the shapes of leafless winter trees with snow in the foreground and the falls and cliffs in the background.

Normally, one would probably regard this as a poorly lit photo of the falls. However, at least in my view, the effect is to treat the typically-central waterfall as part of the background and instead draw attention to the forms of the trees, whose shapes echo the curves of the cliffs and the shadow line across the falls.

keywords: California, Landscape, National Park, Place, Travel, Valley, Winter, Yosemite, valley, usa, travel, scenic, landscape, snow, meadow, merced, river, trees, bare, tracks, footprints, cliff, mountains, rocks, fall, falls, blue sky, lost arrow, ice, sun, light, stock