Tag Archives: road

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

Lake, Granite, and Forest Reflection

July 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Granite slabs rise above the reflected shoreline of Tenaya Lake, Yosemite National Park

I woke up on this morning in Yosemite Valley, car camping (as in “camping in the back of my car”) so that I could rise well before dawn, get out of the Valley, and drive over Tioga Pass in the morning light on this first weekend during which the road was open. It had actually opened the previous day, and I had made a ritual midday “first of the season” drive to the pass, but it was in light that was less than inspiring – hence my return at an earlier hour this next morning. It was dark when I left the Valley and the sky began to lighten as I headed up toward highway 120 and the trans-Sierra route.

I stopped along the way in the very early light to photograph lakes and rocks and trees and granite, and by the time I arrived at the shoreline of Tenaya Lake I felt like the light was going. However, the stillness of the water and the slight atmospheric recession produced by morning haze caught my attention and I pulled over. The main draw for me in this composition and a few other similar ones that I did at the same time was the reflection of the sunlit granite slabs ascending from the far shoreline. I also wanted to contrast that hard and bright surface with the softer and darker patterns of the forest beyond and the shaded faces above the forest.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Abandoned Buildings, Leadfield

June 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Abandoned buildings at the site of the Leadfield mines, Death Valley National Park

In a way there is really nothing that special about Leadfield. It is one of many, many abandoned outposts and mining sites found all over California and, for that matter, all over the West. These sites remain, though precariously in some cases, as a reminder of a number of things: history that is not all that distant, the people who must have been willing to come to such places and attempt to scratch out a living by mining, the human capacities for misleading others and for falling victim to those who would mislead, and the temporal nature of things that might seem permanent at the time.

I’m no historian, but I can share a few facts about this particular spot. In the 1920s the town – with some semi-permanent buildings and reportedly many tents – came into existence and died again in the span of less than a single year. Although the reports of ore in the area and situation that might allow it to be successfully mined were wild exaggerations or downright lies, a road was built into this rugged area, work was started on a mill, and today there is still plenty of evidence of mines all around the area. I made this photograph from the tailings pile at the entrance to what I think may be the main mine shaft, looking out over the site in what I imagine might be the direction that a person working that mine might have looked. I wonder it these people took as much notice as I did of the tiny and inconsequential appearance of the human landscape against the vast and rugged natural landscape beyond?

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspen Trees, Boulder Field

June 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful golden autumn aspen trees among eastern Sierra boulders.

This is yet another of the small set of eastern Sierra fall color photographs I made this year, almost entirely on this single day in very early October, when we paused here on our long drive to location far east of here. In a typical year, I would regard this very early date in October as being a bit too early for prime aspen color, but we did find some stands of trees that were showing very intense coloration. In some ways this wasn’t a total surprise, as I had seen some very early aspen color a couple of weeks earlier in sections of the eastern Sierra. One wonders what the cause of the unusual schedule of change might have been this year: the very dry preceding winter, global climate change, or simply an outlier in the normal range of variation.

In any case, we made the best use of this single day of eastern Sierra aspen chasing, starting early in the morning close to an eastern Sierra lake where I know I can usually find good color and then working outwards from there. After a midday break we resumed our search in the afternoon, heading up a slightly different route where we found a lot of very bright golden trees. This group was in a location that I return to frequently – an area of very broken granite and large boulders, with trees of various sizes. It is also an area that loses the sun quite early at this time of year, since it lies east of very tall mountains leading upward to the Sierra crest. To my way of thinking, this is a good thing, since I like to shoot in the soft and diffused shaded light.

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

Plants in Sandstone Cliff

June 6, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Plants grow in cracks in a sandstone cliff in the Zion National Park high country

For some reason, the small area where this cliff is found – along the Mount Carmel Highway – holds some fascination for me, and I have stopped here to photograph quite a few times. (This despite the fact that there is no good place to pull over!) In close proximity there are a small stream bed, some beautiful trees growing near the cliff, a section of much more fractured rock, and this cliff of clean, straight rock cut by vertical cracks and crossed by the diagonal lines formed by the texture of the sandstone.

In different light this section of the cliff can be a lot more red, but here I photographed it in shaded light and the tones shifted significantly towards blue. The small plants seem to survive quite well growing it what seems like an impossible location, and when I made the photograph the one on the right was just beginning to take on fall colors. A closer view reveals that the rock’s surface is covered with a wide variety of types of lichen, much of it a bit too small to make out in this web-sized photograph.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: road

Lake, Granite, and Forest Reflection

Abandoned Buildings, Leadfield

Autumn Aspen Trees, Boulder Field

Plants in Sandstone Cliff

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