Tag Archives: receding

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

The Ridges Beyond

Image Leave a comment
The Ridges Beyond
A series of Eastern Sierra ridges leads to the east beyond a backcountry lake in morning light.

The Ridges Beyond. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A series of Eastern Sierra ridges leads to the east beyond a backcountry lake in morning light.

Because variations on this particular scene comprise a significant portion of the photographs I made during our August Sierra backcountry sojourn I have been trying to release them somewhat gradually. However, even though I shared a quite different version of the view from this camera position just a few days ago, here’s another. This one is, obviously, a near-panorama rendition that takes in the far edge of “our” little lake, its outlet, surrounding ridges, the more distant scene, and some beautiful morning clouds. The whole scene is softened by a bit of backlit morning haze.

Sometimes I’m immediately certain of what a photograph will look like as I make the exposure. But other times I’m less sure and I reserve judgment, perhaps making multiple exposures that will work for any of several possible directions I might take with the subject. That was the case with this scene — multiple “takes” were required not only for that reason but also to ensure that I’d be able to work with some rather extreme light contrasts between the shadowed foreground and the very bright clouds and 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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Big Sur Headlands, Autumn Light and Fog

Image Leave a comment
Big Sur Headlands, Autumn Light and Fog
Thinning fog, brilliant autumn sunlight , and receding headlands along the rugged Big Sur coast.

Big Sur Headlands, Autumn Light and Fog. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Thinning fog, brilliant autumn sunlight , and receding headlands along the rugged Big Sur coast.

This is a spot that I visit on virtually every trip to the Big Sur Coast. The place where I pull over and find this view is not a spot where you would likely consider stopping. The view is not really all that visible from the roadway, and I think I first found it by spotting the subject from another place and speculating about where I might need to go to find the angle I was looking for… and then successively trying a series of pull-outs until I found one that worked. I know — figuring out which wide spot on the road to use for my camera position sort of diminishes the romance of the whole thing!

But this view! There is a series of tall and steep headlands that fall directly to the Pacific Ocean here. Beyond there is a shallow bay, and then the coast curves back toward the ocean in the distance. The formation of the successive headlands is mirrored in a series of successive ridges running from the ocean back toward peaks. Of course, based on the photograph I made on this visit you will have to take some of this on faith since you cannot see it. Because the coastline here gradually heads further east as it goes south, by late morning the sun’s light reflects off the water, and when there is a bit of fog, as on this day, the effect is remarkable. The atmosphere truly glows, and it is almost too bright to look at. Since I have photographed this before, I’ll point out that that there are two features of this rendition that are a bit different. First, that glowing fog is unusual. Second, I decided to go with a bit broader composition here, and I included the sweep of the darker near ridge at the bottom of the frame.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Rain, Cottonwood Mountains

2 Comments

Rain, Cottonwood Mountains
Rain, Cottonwood Mountains

Rain, Cottonwood Mountains. Death Valley National Park, California. April 2, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon showers from a clearing storm fall on receding ridges of the Cottonwood Mountains, Death Valley National Park

This had been a “weather day,” with several hours of snowfall high up in the Panamint Range, where we had photographed sunrise—such as it was— and wildflowers and, of course, snow. We spent the morning and half the afternoon kicking around up high in these mountains, enjoying the late-season surprise cold weather, finding tons of wildflowers, and visiting various historical remnants of the mining days in Death Valley National Park. My typical shooting day in a situation like this starts well before dawn, includes a midday break, and then moves on to late afternoon and evening shooting until it is dark. But it was well past mid-afternoon when we finally descended from the Panamints.

There was no time for a real break, so we headed right on out to find an evening subject. We had not yet photographed in the Mesquite Dunes, and my initial thought was to photograph there in late afternoon and evening light. In the right conditions there can be wonderful light late in the day, especially during the final few minutes before the sun leaves the dunes. But there were still clouds floating around, especially to the west, and I wasn’t at all sure that we would see the good light out among the dunes. So I decided that it might make more sense to go to a higher spot where the wider panorama would let me pick out various areas of the Valley and surrounding mountains as the light changed. Arriving at “the spot,” I looked west and saw that showers were still falling over the Cottonwood Mountains and glowing with backlight from the late afternoon sun, so I put on the long lens and made some photographs of portions of the range where the falling rain masked the details and turned the mountains into abstract shapes.

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Dunes, Evening

Leave a comment

Dunes, Evening
Dunes, Evening

Dunes, Evening. Death Valley National Park, California. December 11, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Receding layers of sand dunes in evening light, Death Valley National Park

After a very long day spent driving a lengthy backcountry gravel road through mountainous terrain, I headed back to my camp at Furnace Creek to take care of camp business and grab something to eat. As I usually do in Death Valley, I scheduled my day around a morning subject and an evening subject. Since the morning work had lasted so long, I was thinking of something closer for the evening and, besides, by the time I was ready to shoot it was probably too late to travel very far in the remaining light before the early sunset of this December day. So I decided to travel up the valley a bit to well-known dunes, where I can almost always find something interesting to photograph if I just go looking.

I stopped some distance from the “usual location,” loaded up some basic equipment, and wandered out into a likely looking section of the terrain that would probably not seem all that special to those seeing the area for the first time. (That’s easy to understand, when the impressive and large sand dunes tower above everything else not far from here!) But I know there is a wealth of interesting things to be found even in what appears to be the plainest of the dunes – conjunctions of light and shadow, textures of sand, tracks of small creatures, plants poking through the sand, and more. When I arrived the low sunlight was just about to leave this area, so I worked quickly, trying to take advantage of fleeting moments of shadow and light. As I came to the top of a low dune I saw this complex terrain of dunes and shadows stretching in front of me.

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.