Five Pines, Reflected Light of El Capitan. Yosemite Valley, California. October 31, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late afternoon light reflected from the face of El Capitan gently illuminates a group of five ponderosa pines near El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley.

I photograph the oak trees of El Capitan Meadow almost every time I visit the Valley. The normal thing to do is to take the road back toward the west end of the Valley, pull out along the right side of the road, and either photograph from the road or head out to the south into the meadow itself. Almost every time I do this I look at the trees on the other side of the road and find them interesting, but I haven’t had much luck in photographing them. I often have the same experience – I look over there and think that there should be obvious subjects for a photograph, and sometimes even pick out general subjects… but when I try to actually shoot them nothing happens.

On this late afternoon on a fall day, the sun had just dropped below the cliffs to the west and I had more or less finished shooting the subjects that I was working with in the meadow. I headed back to the car and once again looked across the road into the forest along its north side. I thought I saw some interesting light over there and a bit further west, so I started walking. Eventually I came to a row of very large trees which I photographed, though I’m still not quite “seeing” an image in those shots. As I worked here I saw this group of five pines nearby and noticed that now that the sunlight was starting to fade from the Valley floor that they were lit with a strong glow from the south west face of El Capitan, which looks right above this section of the forest – it was as if someone had set up a 3000′ foot tall light panel just for me.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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