Tag Archives: rock

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

Plants and Fractured Granite

November 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Various rain-moistened plants growing in a fracture in lichen-encrusted glacial granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was made in almost exactly the same spot as the photograph I posted yesterday, in an area of water-stained granite along the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. Not only was I fortunate to have soft light, but it was cloudy and it had been raining lightly just before we went out to shoot. You can’t ask for much better conditions for such a subject: soft light from the clouds, colors saturated by the moisture, and a few small drops of rain still on the leaves of the plants. (The latter may not quite be visible in this little jpg image.)

I’m always on the lookout for this little intimate landscapes, especially if they include Sierra granite. I had been wandering around this area trying to find ways to make compositions out of the reddish and rain-moistened rock, shooting trees and small plants and even a few isolated rocks. This plant was growing out of a narrow crack and hanging downward, its green contrasting with the reddish-brown color of the rocks . The arrangement of the nearly vertical crack, the diagonal boundaries between the red rock and the gray rock, and the mottled texture of the lichen also caught my eye.

When I share a photograph like this one, I’m reminded of my friend Mike, a retired Yosemite ranger, who pointedly reminded me once that sometimes there really is no good reason to name the precise location of such a scene. The location is irrelevant to the photograph, similar little scenes are repeated thousands of times over throughout the Sierra, and it isn’t really about the specific place at all.

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Detail, Red Cathedral

November 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I have recently posted other photographs made in the area of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, including one other of this feature sometimes known as the Red Cathedral. It stands to the right of the more famous and recognizable parts of the Zabriskie Point Landscape where, for example, Manley Beacon is one of the most well-known visual icons in the park.

This detail photograph was made using a long lens very shortly after the first morning light had arrived on this feature. In my experience, getting good light on Red Cathedral can be a tricky thing. Parts of it face away from the sun and towards Death Valley and because its face is deeply fluted it can be tricky avoiding blocked shadows. But increasing exposure too much creates problems with saturated colors on the brightest strata that cut through its face. If you shoot it in the morning, light somewhat softened by some high clouds can be helpful, and that is what I had on this morning – the sun light is direct, but it is also filtered a bit by passing through broken clouds to the east.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Hikers, Titus Canyon

November 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hikers in Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

There are essentially two ways to get to this portion of Titus Canyon in Death Valley National Park – you can either do a very long drive from near Beatty on gravel roads or you can walk a short distance up from the base of the canyon along the eastern side of Death Valley itself. I’ve done both. The road is quite an experience – in any other park it would probably be regarded as a very special thing, especially the last portion above Death Valley where it twists and turns down a slot canyon that is in places barely wide enough to a vehicle yet so tall that it can be hard to see the tops of the canyon walls. (It is not exactly a bad road, but it isn’t trivial either. There are some very exposed sections where it crosses the mountain ridge and descends past Leadville. Although there are reports of people using lesser vehicles, take seriously the recommendations for reasonably high ground clearance and some from of all-wheel drive.)

However, on this visit I simply parked my car at the base of the canyon, shouldered my camera equipment, and walked up the canyon a ways. There is, of course, much that you probably won’t see if you enter the canyon this way, largely because the road is so long that you won’t likely cover much of it on foot. However, I think that you can more clearly sense the scale of the lower slot canyon when traveling of foot. I included two hikers who happened by to give a sense of that scale to the landscape.

Photographs: Imaginary Landscapes, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Surf, Rocks, and Horizon

November 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An imaginary landscape from surf, rocks and horizon at Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

I refer to photographs like this one as “imaginary landscapes” – though I suppose that this one is actually an imaginary seascape. The boundary between these photographs and my Regular Old Garden Variety Landscapes is a bit nebulous, but it relates to how far and how intentionally the interpretation of the scene departs from what might be regarded as its objective reality. In this case, some things were done at the time of exposure and some other things were done in post that make this image more obviously a subjective interpretation of the scene than might be the case with many of my other photographs. But you could see that by looking at it, right?

In any case, this is a single photographic “capture” made with a long exposure time that was extended by the use of a nine-stop neutral density filter – and this is what creates the majority of the soft quality of the image. Some additional work was done in post to further manipulate the original image – work with saturation and certain ways of diffusing portions of the image and so forth. In the end, little of that matters beyond the fact that these techniques were ways of producing the image that I had in mind, and which I intend to evoke something about the nature of the real scene upon which it is based.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: rock

Plants and Fractured Granite

Detail, Red Cathedral

Hikers, Titus Canyon

Surf, Rocks, and Horizon

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