Tag Archives: print

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

Spring Torrent, Impossible Tree Fall

June 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

An early spring snow-melt torrent flows over Impossible Tree Fall, Yosemite National Park, California.

This photograph takes me back to last year in mid-June, on the day that the Tioga Pass Road opened for the season. That was a very different year than this drought year! Back then the pass opened very late – though not the latest ever – and in mid-June there was still water, snow, and ice everywhere! One of the special treats of crossing the pass on the first day of the summer after a very wet winter is that the landscape comes alive with flowing water. Water is on the move almost everywhere. Rivers are full to their banks and beyond, waterfalls flow across almost every cliff, and there are creeks everywhere, including places that you might never have imagined they would flow when you visited later in the season.

This small cascade flows very close to Tioga Pass Road, tumbling down over boulders and a series of small benches and ledges. One of the most notable features is the single tree growing right in its path, seemingly “impossible” not only because its roots seem attached only to bare granite but also because it grows in the middle of a seasonal waterfall! I came upon the fall a bit later in the morning, when the rising sun was just barely topping the ridge above the waterfall, sending light down across the slopes and backlighting the tumbling fall.

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: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Plants, Redwood Forest

June 11, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

New spring growth on the forest floor among the redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, California.

This is another photograph that I have been “sitting on” for over a year. Back then I made a spring visit to the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, and, as always, arriving very early in the morning. By this time in late April the forest plants were growing like crazy, especially since this had been (and still was, at that point) an unusually wet season. Lush plants were growing everywhere on the forest floor beneath the canopy of coast redwoods, and there was water everywhere.

As I walked along the trail I was keeping my eyes out for small areas of foliage that were dense enough to be almost solid and which included combinations of more than one kind of plant. The undergrowth of “clover” – actually Oregon oxalis or redwood sorrel – was growing everywhere, but I wanted something other than a uniform patch of that plant. Near a trail junction in deep shade beneath the trees I found these plants. At the time I was thinking of a color rendition of the photograph, but as I worked on it in post I became frustrated with that possibility due to the difficult color of the shaded light and some reflections on the surfaces of the leaves. So I let this image go and moved on to others. I was recently revisiting raw files from 2011 and when I arrived at this one, it now seemed like it might be worth working on in black and white.

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

Trees and Evening Sky

June 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees silhouetted against cloud-filled evening sky, Yosemite National Park.

The last time I posted a photograph of more or less this scene, the colors were so bright that you almost needed sunglasses! The photograph was made on an evening that ultimately turned into one of the most astonishingly colorful ones I have experienced in the Sierra – and I have experienced a few! Although that evening began with what most might regard as extraordinarily unpromising light – murky haze and overcast – I had an idea that these might be just the conditions in which the sun drops below the edge of the clouds far to the west just before sunset and then lights the clouds from beneath, a situation that can suddenly turn the sky into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of colors.

Eventually that is just what happened. But this photograph was made just before that show began, or perhaps during the very first stages of it when it was not at all certain what might develop. There were high, thin clouds in the sky to the west, and they began to glow a bit with evening backlight, so I lined up this little group of trees on the granite slabs and photographed them in silhouette against the sky. A few minutes later… it was not going to be time to be making black and white photographs!

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Sports

Sail Boat, San Francisco Bay

June 9, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A sailboat in morning light on the San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, California.

From time to time I take the train to San Francisco very early in the morning and then photograph while walking around the City. I often start by walking towards the Embarcadero waterfront, especially on sunny mornings when the haze over the bay is beautifully backlit, sometime so much that the glow obscures the East Bay cities and even the hills beyond. This was one of those mornings.

I had begun by photographing a bridge and then a construction site in the Mission Bay area, but I then headed back towards AT&T park, passing in on the walkway that travels along the waterfront. As I passed this area I had an idea that the atmosphere might be just about right, but I also realized that much of the foreground included subjects that I didn’t want in the frame. I was just in the process of switching to a longer lens – so that I could limit my field of view to an areas between the obstructions – when I saw this sail boat begin to approach from the right. I quickly finished the lens switch and moved to a spot that isolated this section of the bay from any other distracting elements, and almost immediately the boat passed across it. I had only a few seconds to work handheld before the boat passed closer to stuff I didn’t’ want in the frame and before a small motorboat accompanying it caught up.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: print

Spring Torrent, Impossible Tree Fall

Plants, Redwood Forest

Sail Boat, San Francisco Bay

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