Tag Archives: river

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

December 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

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

Yosemite Autumn Foliage 2013

December 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I have had a few final photographs of this season’s autumn color in Yosemite Valley sitting on my computer for several weeks now, waiting their place in the queue of photographs for the blog. That queue had become quite long, what with the overlap of remaining photographs from last summer, lots of other autumn color photographs, and now the onset of winter subjects such as migratory birds and so forth. Since these photos have been bumped to the back of the line too many times already, I have decided to simply share them as a group today.

Autumn Meadow and Cottonwood Trees. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved. – Afternoon light on cottonwood trees with fall foliage in a Yosemite Valley meadow, backed by the lower face of Cathedral Rocks.

Autumn Maple Leaves, Forest. Yosemite Valley, California. October 31, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved. – A final burst of autumn big leaf maple color in a Yosemite Valley forest

Riverbank Cottonwood Trees, Autumn. Yosemite Valley, California. October 31, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved. – Trees with golden autumn leaves grow among evergreens along the bank of the Merced River

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

Riverbank, Cottonwood Trees

December 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cottonwood trees with fall foliage reflected in the calm surface of the Merced River in late afternoon light

It is barely a month after I made this photograph, and the feeling is now more that of winter than of autumn. (Though where I live some autumn leaves are still falling for a few more days.) But back at the end of October I spent two days photographing fall color in Yosemite Valley. Sierra weather can be almost anything at this time of year, but aside from some leftover snow high up along the Valley’s walls, down below it was sunny and bright with the warm autumn light that can characterize the season in these mountains.

The main leaf color in the Valley comes from black oak, big leaf maple, cottonwoods, and dogwood, each providing its own variations of color and timing. When I was there the maples were a bit past their peak, and at least some of the dogwoods were still becoming more colorful. It seemed like cottonwoods were very close to their most colorful and the black oaks were also quite good. On the first afternoon I spent some time wandering along a section of the Merced River, photographing the cottonwood trees with the Valley’s cliffs as a backdrop and occasionally with the autumn-smooth waters of the Merced reflecting their colors.

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

River Bank and Cottonwood Trees

November 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A thicket of small cottonwood trees leans toward the Merced River, Yosemite National Park

When I first encountered this riverside thicket of small trees, I half-regarded them as a nuisance, believe it or not. My attention was focused on cottonwood trees on the opposite bank of the river and a bit downstream, and I was looking for a good vantage point where I could set up my tripod to photograph them. While I was intrigued by these closely-spaced trees and their beautiful autumn foliage, my initial orientation to them was affected by how difficult they made it to find a good spot for my tripod with a clear view of the other trees! (Yes, I did eventually find a small spot down by the edge of the water from which I could make that other photograph.)

After passing them I looked back and saw the way that the trees varied from almost perfectly vertical in the middle of the thicket to banding almost horizontally over the river closer to the bank in an attempt, I suppose, to find unobstructed sunlight. I knew there was a photograph in this scene but it was a bit tricky. Framing it the way I wanted required the use of a longer lens, but that introduced depth of field challenges. Initially I saw it as a color photograph, especially since the leaves on these cottonwoods were at their peak of intense autumn gold. However, working on the photograph later, it seemed to me that the color wasn’t the main story in this scene, and that a black and white rendition might do a better job of highlighting the varied yet related forms of those tree trunks, and still capture the beautiful side-light coming from across the river and down the Valley at this very late afternoon hour.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: river

Sand and Cracked Mud

Yosemite Autumn Foliage 2013

Riverbank, Cottonwood Trees

River Bank and Cottonwood Trees

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