Tag Archives: print

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

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

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The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn. Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

I’ll say good bye to 2014 with a few sunset photographs this week. Recently I had reasons to go back through over a decades worth of photographs, including many that I have not shared. While this is certainly work, it is also occasionally a source of wonderful surprises — as seeing the older photographs triggers memories of photographic adventures that I haven’t thought about for a while and as I “discover” photographs that have sat in the raw file archives for many years. They get left there for a range of reasons. Sometimes I just didn’t yet “see” them the right way at the time I made them, or in other cases I got busy before I finished working my way thoroughly through a set of images and I moved on too soon. (This may be yet another reason to be conservative when it comes to deleting “unneeded” files!)

This photograph came from the very end of several days of photographing fall color in the eastern Sierra. It was a special few days, as there was light snow and wonderful color for most of the time I was there, and these conditions had me shooting around the clock, from before sunrise until it was too dark to make more photographs. On this final day I did some shooting in the eastern Sierra near Lee Vining in the late afternoon and finally decided that I was finished and that it was time to start back home through Yosemite. In the early evening light I headed up Lee Vining Canyon toward Tioga Pass, and as I drove by Ellery Lake I found these lovely conditions: new snow on the ground, golden hour light on the peaks and reflected in the surface of the lake, a nearly full moon rising above the shoulder of the high peaks, into blue sky slightly streaked with thing lines of clouds, and the complex symmetries of curving ridges. I couldn’t have asked for a better benediction to mark the final photographs of this trip.

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls

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Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls
Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls

Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. October 24, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Red sandstone canyon walls tower above a lone cottonwood tree with early fall colors

This tree is becoming my favorite (or maybe only second favorite…) tree in this part of Utah. It grows in the bottom of a canyon in a place that requires a bit of hiking — and a bit of driving — to access. It is perhaps not all that much better than hundreds or thousands of other trees in such places, but it happens to be one that I saw and photographed!

A group of photographers walked down this canyon on a beautiful October day when sunlight filtered down into the canyon from high above. We were in no hurry, and we frequently stopped to work a particular subject and often separated as each of us focused on his or her personal discoveries. This section of the canyon is one of those where you have route options — you could either walk down the bottom of the canyon in the creek bed (which I did on my walk back out) or you could take a slight shortcut up and across the higher ground on the inside of one of the bends in the canyon. For no particular reason that I can recall now, I decided to take the higher route in this spot and as a result I ended up with this view of the lone cottonwood tree tucked into the canyon at the base of this gigantic sandstone cliff, the intensity of the color of its autumn foliage increased by the soft, reflected canyon light.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Fractured Stone, Desert Plants

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Fractured Stone, Desert Plants
Fractured Stone, Desert Plants

Fractured Stone, Desert Plants. Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. October 21, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sparse desert plants grow among fractured sandstone slabs

Though the title of this photograph mentions plants, there are small and rather hard to see. In terrain like this that should probably not be surprising, since I made the photograph in a place that was very rocky and rugged. I had walked out a bit into the landscape to get a view into a nearby gully that marked the beginning of a much larger canyon when I looked down and noticed these patterned rocks.

Here the rocks are almost entirely in layers, or strata, as is typical in this part of the Southwest. We most easily notice the huge, think layers than make up cliffs like those found elsewhere in this national park. But there are also some very thin layers, and these rocks comprise on such layer that happened to be exposed at this particular spot. If I recall correctly, I first noticed this as I came to the edge of a drop-off and noticed that these were the rocks at its edge. They are apparently are hard enough to resist erosion a bit more than the underlying material. This also explains why, a moment later, I stepped back from this edge — the harder rocks actually extended out over the drop-off a bit where the underlying ground had eroded!

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Penn Station Subway Platform

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Penn Station Subway Platform
Penn Station Subway Platform

Penn Station Subway Platform. New York City. August 15, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Subway tracks and a few people on the platform, Penn Station

There is not a whole lot to say about this photograph, though I might tell a technical secret about it.

The photograph is obviously from the New York Subway system, shot underground with available light at a relatively quiet time between trains while we were waiting for the next one to arrive. I shot this in street photography mode, during a week when I did not once use a tripod or a remote release, and when I shot entirely with a small handheld camera while on foot. I probably don’t have the point out that this photograph could be “about” several things: the small family group sitting on the bench and waiting for their train, the light and colors of the underground station, and the geometry of the structures and tracks.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.