Tag Archives: road

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sierra Forest, Morning Light

September 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light arrives in dense Sierra Nevada forest

Spend enough time somewhere and you begin to develop surprising relationships with surprising little places that perhaps no one else would even notice. Since I’ve been going to the Sierra for decades, I’ve had plenty of time to find my own “little places” and to begin to understand and value this. Some decades ago, when my backpacking experience became extensive enough that I often found myself back at places that I had previously visited, I was surprised to discover that particular rocks (like one at a high country lake where I often set up my camp kitchen, or another where I once sat and watched a storm blow in), creeks (such as one near 11,000′ in the southern Sierra where I have camped alone and with friends), trees (such as the one we discovered decades ago on a trip with kids, shortly after it had been blasted apart by lightning), and others acquire a quality of old, familiar friends.

This little bit of forest has become one of those places. It is not quite in the “back-country.” In fact, it is a scene that I drive past on my way to other places. But a few years ago it caught my attention and I began to inspect it every time I passed by, sometimes stopping to look more closely. I cannot quite articulate why or how it is that this bit of forest became “mine,” but it did. I was camped nearby on this morning and had gone out to look for light when I remembered the spot and arrived just as the first direct morning sunlight was beginning to enter the grove.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Receding Ridges, Trees, Morning

August 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning haze and tree covered glacial ridges, Yosemite National Park

This is a view that has long caught my attention. It is very close to a place where [i]every[/i] park visitor stops to take in a famous view, but I suspect that quite a few miss this view in their anticipation of the stop for the more famous overlook. Some years ago a group of friends and I had an unusual experience here. One of my long-time backpacking buddies and I love listening to classical music on long drives, and we sometimes attempt to time the music so that particularly appropriate and impressive points in the music may coincide with our arrival at appropriate and impressive places. (Full backpacking and music geekery into one thing, and that’s what you end up with! ;-) We we listening to Mahler’s second symphony and we managed to hit the overwhelmingly powerful conclusion of that work right as we came around the bend to see this view. Needless to say, that made an impression on me, and the place is both special on its own and now associated with that experience.

Music aside, this is a stunning bit of Yosemite high country scenery, and it is perhaps (somewhat ironically) revealed even more clearly in the morning haze seen here. In the foreground trees manage to eke out an existence on the nearly solid granite slabs of a glaciated dome. Another similar ridge rises in the middle distance with more trees. And it keeps going. On the other side of that ridge there is a huge and deep valley, but across its expanse there is even more of the glaciated granite terrain, all of it highlighted in the early morning back-light.

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

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

Shoreline, Trees, Morning

July 20, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on trees and granite slabs along the shoreline of Tenaya Lake

I think this photograph combines several elements that I find attracting in my landscape work. I have written that I sometimes like to photograph along the “edges of the light,” the boundaries between shadow and sunlight that move across landscapes, especially when it is early or late in the day and/or when the landscape is surrounded by higher ridges. This photograph was made in early morning, in an area where the sunlight does not arrive until some time after dawn. When the light does come, it works its way down the granite slabs on the left as beams of light pass across the valley from the right. I also love to work with haze. (I often am baffled by photographers who always want crystal clear atmosphere — that can be beautiful, too, but it can also be stark and obvious.) There was plenty of haze on this morning, and the light shining through it partially obscures the background forest. And the photograph is rendered in black and white. While I don’t think of myself as a “black and white photographer,” I frequently find myself seeing scenes like this one in monochrome. Perhaps that goes back to my roots as a photographer.

There is something a bit unusual about this landscape, too — a road bed features prominently in the scene! This is the edge of Tenaya Lake along the Tioga Pass Road through Yosemite’s high country, and here the road (for better or worse) passes right along the shoreline. But for me the trees are the dominant feature, standing along the base of the granite slabs, trying to push their way up onto the slabs, and filling the background as forest ascends the slopes of this valley toward the granite ridges above.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees, Gravel Road

July 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A gravel road passes cottonwood trees in fall color, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah

By the time I made this photograph, the day almost seemed to be winding down. We had gotten up before dawn and made our way to the start of a long gravel road, where we paused to photograph as the sun came up. It was one of those almost unplanned moments — no specific landscape in mind, but there was the rising sun, so we stopped and found that we could photograph a range of subjects in that light. Then we headed on down this road, eventually arriving at one of our possible goals, where we took a hike to a high place with a panoramic view.

By now it was getting on toward the middle of the day — mostly the non-shooting hours for photographers in many cases — so we headed back the way we came. As we drove we came to this flat with good-sized cottonwood trees spread along a small gravel road heading off toward the uplifted terrain of Capitol Reef National Park. The autumn color of these trees was irresistible… so we didn’t resist! We stopped, got out, photographed for a while , and then were back on the road.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: road

Sierra Forest, Morning Light

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Receding Ridges, Trees, Morning

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Shoreline, Trees, Morning

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Cottonwood Trees, Gravel Road

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

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