Tag Archives: point

Lake and Mountain, Morning

Lake and Mountain, Morning
Dawn light comes to mountain slopes above a reflecting High Sierra backcountry lake

Lake and Mountain, Morning. Hoover Wilderness Area, California. August 7, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn light comes to mountain slopes above a reflecting High Sierra backcountry lake

I woke up early on the third and final morning of this pack trip — not early by photographic standards, but just before dawn, nonetheless. The rest of my party — perhaps because they are not photographers — continued to sleep in for another hour or more as I crawled out of my tent, gathered up my (downsized for this trip) camera equipment, and wandered off to see what I could see.

The sun had still not quite risen as I came to the top of a small hill above the lake, but very soon its light began to touch the highest peaks and stream across the shoulder of the large peak towering above the opposite shoreline of the lake. Sometimes the scale of a subject such as this mountain seems more obvious to me when I choose to not include all of it, so I chose to crop tightly enough to not show the peak — or the relatively uninteresting plain blue sky above it. (My theory is that a photograph framed so that the entire subject isn’t visible can sometimes produce an impression that the subject is so large that it cannot be contained within the frame.) As I made this exposure the first light was hitting the rocky face of the upper slopes of the mountain, and that light was reflected in the undisturbed early morning surface of the lake.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Alpine Lake, Morning

Alpine Lake, Morning
A solitary sunrise angler stands on shoreline rocks at an alpine Sierra Nevada lake reflecting a nearby peak

Alpine Lake, Morning. Eastern Sierra Nevada California. August 7, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary sunrise angler stands on shoreline rocks at an alpine Sierra Nevada lake reflecting a nearby peak

During the first weekend of August I joined a group of friends for a quick backpacking trip into the eastern Sierra Nevada along the northeastern boundary of Yosemite National Park. This wasn’t primarily a photography trip so I went light, carrying a smaller system with only one lens and packing a very small tripod. The first day of the trip was, as we like to say, “interesting.” We woke up to cloudy skies that virtually guaranteed rain, and that guarantee was fulfilled in the late afternoon: I had just time to set up my tend before three hours of rain commenced! The next morning was clear, and after drying out I headed on up the trail to this beautiful lake along the crest.

After five years of historic drought and the resultant loss of permanent snow fields and damaged to vegetation, it is wonderful this year to see the changes created by last winter’s record snowfall. There are still snow banks everywhere, and even in August there were many snow crossings. On the morning after our night at this lake I got up at dawn and walked to a high place with a panoramic view of the lake and its surroundings. Just as the first sunlight began to stream across the shoulder of the peak across the lake a lone angler came to the shoreline and (thank you!) began to fish from a granite outcropping, framed against the reflection of the peak and morning sky.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Before The Dust Storm

Before The Dust Storm
Just after dawn, the precursors of a day of Death Valley dust storms

Before The Dust Storm. Death Valley National Park, California. April 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Just after dawn, the precursors of a day of Death Valley dust storms

I’ve been through a number of desert dust storms in and around Death Valley National Park — ranging from minor “dust blowing through the campsite” events to “damaging to my vehicle” events. (The latter was some years back as I left the park and headed out to highway 395 and, as I later found out, drove through record-breaking wind and driving dust and sand, to the permanent distress of my windshield.) It is fair to say that my feelings about such conditions are mixed. Frankly, they are very unpleasant — the dust gets into everything, from clothes to eyes to camera gear, and it is almost impossible to do much of anything if you are inside a really bad storm. In fact, near the end of the day on which I made this photograph we simply had to hunker down indoors for several hours and wait for it to stop. But there can be a kind of terrible beauty in these events as well, and if you are cautious you can photograph them.

I recall a day many years ago when I started to make sense of the antecedent conditions that lead to such storms. It was the final day of a Death Valley visit and I was down along the southeast part of the main valley, when I noticed a kind of fuzzy glow in the atmosphere. I made a few photographs and headed north to leave the park, and within an hour or so I was engulfed in a huge cloud of dust. On the day I made this photograph we went to a high overlook along the top of a mountain range to photograph dawn light. This time I recognized that strange, milky atmosphere, seen along and above the Black Mountains in the distance in the photograph. The morning was, indeed, quite beautiful. But it was only hours later that we began to see dust above us — even though we were thousands of feet up in the mountains — as a giant storm developed, and by the time we returned to the bottom of Death Valley in the mid-afternoon one of the biggest dust storms I have seen enveloped the area.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

West From The Panamints

West From The Panamints
Early evening view looking west from ridge of the Panamint range, Death Valley National Park

West From The Panamints. Death Valley National Park, California. April 3, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early evening view looking west from ridge of the Panamint range, Death Valley National Park

I made this photograph on the evening of my arrival in Death Valley. The drive is always a long one, taking most of the day when I come straight from the San Francisco Bay Area. This time I had started in the Carrizo Plains National Monument, where I had stopped overnight to join friends for some photography of this year’s extraordinary wildflower bloom. That meant that even though I had a slightly shorter drive I got a later start — I wasn’t about the leave the Carrizo without making some morning photographs, and then I explored a slower route through the Temblor Range on my way out to the Great Central Valley before continuing on to Death Valley.

My Death Valley plans were not set in stone, so when I arrived in the park I wasn’t quite sure where I would go the first night. I had some thoughts of heading out to a remote canyon area to camp, but given the late arrival I started to consider simply camping at Stovepipe Wells. When I got there and it looked like the wind might kick up a dust storm I changed my mind again and headed up into the Panamint Mountains. (Anyone who has endured a Stovepipe Wells dust storm will sympathize!) In any case, I set up a camp in the mountains and then headed out to this remote ridge top location, a place from which I have often photographed in the early morning. The haze was a bit thick looking to the east, but what a view there was to the west! In that direction the same haze glowed in the backlight of the evening sun with ridges receding into the distance and culminating at the crest of the Sierra Nevada.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | LinkedIn | Email


All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.