Tag Archives: season

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

Autumn Rain, Yosemite Valley

November 8, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn rain mutes the colors and details of Yosemite Valley and Bridal Veil Fall

Look! An icon! Yes, I do photograph them from time to time. I made this photograph at a pretty well-known and popular location. (A friend was once asked the best way to photograph this spot. His answer was, “Don’t.”) If you are in Yosemite Valley, and especially if you are traveling between the Valley and other locations, as I was during this visit, you are pretty much guaranteed to pass by here. I virtually always take a look. Sometimes I don’t stop. Sometimes I stop and leave the camera in the car and just wander a bit. Sometimes I spot friends there and I stop to talk. Occasionally something special happens — a more frequent occurrence this time of year — and I stop and make some photographs!

Coming down the hill on Highway 41 I had stopped above the tunnel and another turnout with a great view up the Valley, and from there I had seen some interesting fog and clouds beginning to assemble. So I headed on down through the tunnel and decided to stop and look around. At first I almost wasn’t going to photograph, but I figured I was there so what the heck! As I assembled my gear it began to rain lightly and the beautiful veil of the rain began to make the atmosphere slightly opaque and soften the scene.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest and Ferns

November 6, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A bed of ferns leads to conifer trees, big leaf maples, and the cliffs of Yosemite Valley

The autumn ferns of the Sierra have fascinated me for some time, and I think of them as among the most interesting of the harbingers of fall. I recall years ago driving across the Sierra to get to the east side in October and finding the transformation of the forest floor that they bring to be fascinating, especially in the evening when they seem to almost glow among the dark trunks of trees. Autumn color in the Sierra is most certainly not just about aspens!

I photographed this bed of ferns going dormant in a small meadow in Yosemite Valley. I stopped at a popular place, but then crossed the road to walk away from that spot and spend some time wandering meadows and forest of conifers and oaks. In this slight clearing at the end of the conifers there was a remarkably lush growth of ferns around this fallen tree, with more trees and more autumn color beyond.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Two Trees, River, Fog

November 2, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful trees on the banks of the Merced River on a foggy autumn morning

I remember the first time I discovered the magic of an autumn rain storm in Yosemite some years ago. I had gone there to photograph fall color — I was mainly thinking of dogwood trees back then — and I was camping. But then it rained. For three days straight. And it rained hard. I was equipped to camp in the rain but perhaps not fully equipped to photograph in such conditions, but I faked it (using a had to shield the camera, for example) and went to work. And I found some special Yosemite magic in the combination of fall colors, rising river levels, resurging waterfalls awakening from end-of-summer slumber, and the beauty of clouds and fog.

I encountered just a bit of that during this year’s brief end-of-October visit to Yosemite. On my way up there from the San Francisco Bay Area the rain poured on me. It mostly stopped when I left Oakhurst, but then there was fog and beautiful light all the way into the park. I made this photograph then next morning in the Valley. I arrived in time to catch the end of the post-rain morning fog, and I quickly went to a spot I know along the Merced, where I found the river had risen dramatically, all the w

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

Burned Forest, Autumn Color

November 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn colors in a forest of burned trees, Yosemite Valley

During this final weekend of October I spent a few days photographing in the Yosemite area, including along the road between Oakhurst and the Valley and then in Yosemite Valley itself. I had quite varied weather conditions — pouring rain on the first day as I drove up from the Bay Area, beautiful evening and morning fog followed by a sunny autumn day, and then a weather forecast of heavy rain that convinced me to beat a retreat from the park a day early.

Late on the second afternoon I stopped at a very popular and iconic location in the Valley, but I walked the other way, heading out into an area of rock, dry meadow and oak trees that gradually transitioned into conifer trees and big leaf maples, the latter being at their peak of fall color. Knowing the Valley pretty well at this point, I often prefer to look past the big sights and just wander, and that’s what I did here, eventually ending up in an area that had been burned recently by a management fire, clearing out the underbrush and charring the lower trunks of tall trees. In fact, the lower trunks were so affected that there were no branches to obstruct the view of the maples just beyond or of the vertical granite cliffs a bit further away.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: season

Autumn Rain, Yosemite Valley

Forest and Ferns

Two Trees, River, Fog

Burned Forest, Autumn Color

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