Tag Archives: red

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

Water and Granite, Tuolumne River

November 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Swift water flows over granite along the bank of the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

In this section of the Tuolumne River – as in many other places throughout the Sierra Nevada – the river passes through a steep section and across granite slabs that span the full width of the river. As the water flows over the granite it forms constantly changing patterns of rock and whitewater that can only be predicted in general ways. The spot included in the photograph was right along the edge of the river, and you can see the transition between the diminished flow along the bottom edge and the faster and more abundant water in the main channel beyond.

Part of the fun of shooting this sort of subject – and shooting it is a pleasant way to spend an hour along the river – is in trying to find workable compositions in such a changeable subject. And making it even more “fun,” the shutter speed becomes an important decision as it determines just much the image is affected by motion blur and how much of the scene is stopped. Fortunately, digital cameras make this process just a bit more predictable and productive, since they allow the photographer to quickly see the result of composition and shutter speed choices and verify whether or not the educated guesses were correct, and to see just how the infinitely variable and unpredictable patterns of flowing water come together at the instant of exposure.

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

Glacial Erratics, Near Glen Aulin

November 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three glacial erratic boulders atop a granite dome near Glen Aulin, Yosemite National Park.

Looking for something to photograph one evening during my September back-country photography trip into the Glen Aulin and McCabe Lakes area of Yosemite National Park, I climbed up from our camp site to the top of this small granite dome or “whaleback” above the valley of Glen Aulin. The dome is merely the most open and exposed portion of a ridge of more durable rock that rises a ways up the slope from near where we were camped, and from its “summit” I had a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding landscape as the day came to an end.

When I first arrived at this spot more than an hour earlier, the sky was almost completely clouded over. This was one of those situations in which the immediate photographic prospects seemed quite limited, with gray skies and murky atmosphere, but with some potential for interesting things to happen if the clouds thinned as sunset approached. So I decided to stick around in this spot rather than wandering around looking for something else, and in the end the clouds did thin. Before I made this photograph, one of the last of the evening, I had managed to find a range of subjects as the light changed: the light from breaks in the clouds began to move across a forest to my right and light a small prominence nearby; light coming over the ridge at the far right back-lit some haze behind trees on a lower ridge that was closer to me; and finally the remaining clouds took on a bit of color right as the sun dropped below the horizon.

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

Dissipating Storm Clouds, Sunset

November 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Sunset light on dissipating thunderstom clouds above granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Late on this September afternoon in the Yosemite back-country I had a good idea that something might happen around sunset, but I could not have known in advance just how intense the cloud color would turn out to be. The set-up was classic. Thunder storms had built up throughout the afternoon, and by late in the day I would see and hear large storms to my north and east – though I remained right on the edge of the storm potential as I was a bit further west. As evening approached the cloud-building forces began to diminish, leaving the tops of the larger cells unsupported, and they began to thin and stretch westward, curving up and over my location along the Tuolumne River.

Knowing that interesting light of one sort or another was probable, I walked to an area of granite slabs and bowls that I had photographed when visiting this area at the start of my trip nearly a week earlier. As I considered a few photographs of the granite and trees in that area, my attention kept being drawn to the sky. At first it remained a relatively low contrast mass of gray, though the thinning clouds started to allow views through falling virga towards more distant clouds that rose into the sunlight. Then, as the sun dropped and the foreground lost the direct light, the clouds began to light up and take on wildly saturated colors. (A technical note: in many of the photographs, though not in this one, the dynamic range between cloud highlights and foreground was so large that it required multiple exposures separated by up to five stops to capture it all!)

I moved to the base of the granite bowl in which I had photographed rocks and small trees a week before when I saw these spectacular clouds building to the north west. The color was simply unbelievable – and you can see that the intense saturated light was not just in the sky, but that it also colored the granite near the bottom of the image. For this photograph I used a short focal length to try to take in a large section of the flowing and wildly shaped and colored clouds.

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

Stones, Stained Granite

November 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Granite stones rest on glaciated slab of stained granite near the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

Scared you, didn’t I? Thought I was going to miss posting a daily photograph, right? Yeah, both of you… ;-)

In any case, I may have mentioned previously that I’m a sucker for Sierra granite, especially the glaciated kind that is found almost everywhere you go in Yosemite National Park, from the Valley to areas surrounding the very highest peaks. (Some of the highest peaks escaped the glaciation themselves, but that’s a longer story for another time.) For me, some combination of glaciated granite slabs, a few “erratic” boulders (“erratics” being boulders moved from their source and left behind by retreating glaciers), some trees, and a bit of meadow grass, perhaps with a stream or lake nearby shouts “Sierra Nevada.”

This photograph does not include all of these Sierra ingredients but it does include the granite. I photographed this small bit of granite slab along a section of the Tuolumne River than runs through the back-country during a week-long backpack trip this past September. Something about the arrangement and color of the four larger stones against the water-stained underlying rock with its complex textures interested me. A lot of what is in the frame may not be visible in the small jpg version posted here, but there is a lot of detail in the frame: the texture or rock, crystal structures on some of the stones, several smaller pebbles, even a bit of dried pine needle.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: red

Water and Granite, Tuolumne River

Glacial Erratics, Near Glen Aulin

Dissipating Storm Clouds, Sunset

Stones, Stained Granite

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