Tag Archives: reflection

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

Pond with Boulders and Trees

August 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A small pond reflects trees and glaciated boulders, Yosemite National Park.

This is a little location that I’ve returned to since I first discovered it a few years ago when I made a random stop along Tioga Pass Road to photograph some fog, looked away from the road, and saw a faint trail leading off into a little valley that looked to be full of rocks. Later I returned and wandered out on the trail and discovered a surprising landscape with glaciated granite, small pools, open forest, and small meadows. The first time I photographed there I had little time, so it ended up being more of a scouting visit than a shoot. However, this summer I planned to reserve part of a morning to wander back up this trail during the time when the light would still be good.

The pools here are almost completely still. The water is flowing, but not much, especially in the small granite rimmed pools like this one. The light was just barely beginning to filter down through the trees, so I had to be a bit careful to avoid hot spots where the sun shone. I’d share where this spot is, except that if you think about what you are passing as you drive along Tioga Pass Road, and occasionally stop and look around, you can probably find your own little spots like this one.

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

Chrysler Building and Street Lamp

August 20, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Black and white photograph of the Chrysler Building and a lamp post in New York City.

Yes, we are in New York City. Needless to say, this is a “target rich environment” for street, urban, and architectural photography. This familiar building is the first post from this trip. It is a black and white photograph for a couple of reasons. First, this turns out to be one of those photograph where I like both the color and black and white interpretations. Second, and more practical, I am working from an uncalibrated monitor and can’t be certain what the colors will look like. With that in mind, it seemed like a good idea to post the BW images first!

The Chrysler Building is an easily recognized Manhattan landmark… especially if you saw “Ghostbusters.” We were out for a “first morning in New York walk” on our first full day here, and the area around this nearby building seemed like a decent objective.

(On a practical note: As with the color calibration issue, I’m not in my usual workflow environment while on the road, so don’t be surprised if some things don’t look exactly like they normally do.)

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

Greenstone Lake, Morning

August 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on Greenstone Lake and surrounding trees and rocky terrain.

Greenstone is a relatively small lake just beyond the upper end of Saddlebag Lake, which is itself located just east of the Sierra crest and Yosemite National Park in an area dominated by Mount Conness and the tall ridge on which it stands. I had arrived before dawn at the Saddlebag Lake parking lot so that I could be on the trail before sunrise. Rather than giving in to the temptation to pay for a “water taxi” ride to the other end of the lake, I took the trail along the left shore, and arrived at Greenstone Lake just about the time that the first direct light was making its way down to this lake and the surrounding rocky hillside.

In this wet year with its late arrival of summer conditions, everything was still very wet around the lake and the meadow plants were still green and growing. (In dry years they start to finish up their growth spurt and begin turning brown by this time.)

I think this lake is a bit tricky to photograph in morning light. The light could be lovely at sunrise, but it would still be well up on the high ridges above the lake. It takes a long time for the sun to get high enough to rise above the ridge leading to Tioga Peak, and by that time most of the early morning warm light quality has given way to more typical daytime light. There were a few challenges in this photograph. They included trying to figure out how to find a workable composition in such a complex scene that was made even more complex by the reflections in the water. I think the triangle of rocky terrain in the upper half of the frame may help with this. The light posed several problems, mainly related to the very large dynamic range between the bright rocks and the shaded areas of forest at upper right. The light color was also tricky – because the shadows tend to be much bluer in a photograph than your eyes register when you are there, I had to mute the very blue quality of the shadows. This was done partly with an overall adjustment to color, but some additional work had to be done directly on the shadows.

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

Morning Reflections, Unnamed Lake

August 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The still early morning surface of an unnamed subalpine lake reflects the boulders and trees along its rocky shoreline, Yosemite National Park.

This is yet another of those little places in Yosemite that is both surprisingly accessible and surprisingly neglected. Since keeping it that way may be a good thing, I’ll refrain from locating it more specifically than to say that it is along the Tioga Pass Road through the park.

I have photographed here before, and I am intrigued by the good-sized granite boulders along the shoreline and out into the water of this shallow lake surrounded by forest. Because of the surrounding terrain, morning light does not reach down to th lake right away, so I was able to shoot in this soft and indirect light and include both some details in the shadows of the forest and their beautifully blurred reflections in the still surface of the water.

The photograph includes one indication of what an unusual year this has been in the high country. The horizontal white area beyond the shoreline trees at the left side of the frame is a melting snow bank. Normally that might not be a big deal, but this photograph was made near the very end of July. It is a very unusual year when we can still find snow at this elevation near the beginning of August!

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