Tag Archives: season

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

Cottonwood Leaf, Dry Grass, Winter

March 13, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A single cottonwood tree lies among dry winter grasses in a Yosemite Valley meadow.

This has been and continues to be a historically dry year in California and especially in the Sierra. More concerning, it is the third such year in a row. In a more typical year — and may those return soon! — the location where I made this photograph would be very wet and perhaps even snow-covered on a day like the one when I visited.

We headed out into the Valley very early on this morning. It was the sort of day when you might hope to find some ground fog in the Valley meadows. We had no luck at the first two meadows we checked, but the third did have a very tenuous and shallow layer of fog, so we stopped. I wandered out into the dry and slightly frosty meadow, and as I did the last of the fog dissipated. As I looked for compositions among the waves of dormant grasses I began to notice that here and there were reddish-brown heart-shaped leaves left over from the autumn cottonwoods.

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

Riparian Thicket, Yosemite Valley

February 21, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy afternoon winter light in a thicket of trees along the banks of the Merced River, Yosemite Valley

A shorter than usual post today, as I’m dealing (successfully!) with an unexpected eye problem, and one effect of the treatment is that I need to minimize computer/reading/writing time for a few days. (The short story is that I had retinal detachment, we caught it right away, were able to treat it on an out-patient basis, I’m home, and the results look fine. In short, what looked scary at first appears to be heading towards an excellent outcome.) So, briefly…

A week ago I was in Yosemite Valley for about two hours between visits to a couple of other places, and I had time to photograph around one of the large meadows late in the day, as the afternoon sun was dropping toward the tops of the cliffs and the hazy air became luminous. I wandered over to a section of the Merced River where I like to photograph cottonwood trees in spring and fall, and looking down the river I saw this little vignette in the backlight.

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

Forest, Afternoon Light

February 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy afternoon winter light in a Yosemite Valley hardwood forest

This may have been just about the briefest visit to Yosemite Valley that I have ever made. We drove up from the Bay Area for two days and one night so that we could attend the opening reception for an art exhibit (Sierra Art Trails) in Oakhurst. We had thought that we might visit one of the Central Valley wildlife refuges on the way — and we ended up spending enough time there that it was after 3:00 when we got to the Yosemite Valley. We briefly stopped to watch people setting up to try to photograph Horsetail Fall, which we did not intend to do, and then headed up to one of the large meadows where I thought that I could photograph trees backlit by the low angle afternoon light.

I started out in a meadow, photographing trees to my west silhouetted against the hazy backlight. Finishing with this subject I wandered over to the banks of the Merced River to look for closer subjects, and as I looked west I saw this tangle of trees which gradually resolved into patterns of downward curving branches superimposed on taller tree trunks leaning to both sides. One challenge was trying to find a composition in this complexity, and another was shooting straight toward the sun without ending up with lens flare. The first took some careful thought, while the second required some contortions to shade the lens with my hand.

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

The Aspen Palette

February 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful eastern Sierra autumn aspen groves along US 395.

This is another photograph from a few years back that I rediscovered while reviewing many, many photographs for a project that I’m working on. I made the photograph in mid-October along highway 395 in the eastern Sierra, where the autumn colors had finally worked their way down from the higher regions toward the valleys. This large grove of aspens is a fall favorite of mine. The sub-grove extend mostly from left to right across the scene, and the genetically related trees of each group seem to change colors at different times and to end up with different coloration — and when my timing is just right and the season cooperates, almost the entire palette of possible aspen colors can appear here at once. In this photograph we have brilliant reds at the bottom of the frame, blending through orange toward yellow/gold, with a few still-green trees and even a few that have lost most of their leaves.

As I worked on this photograph recently I realized that I made it at a time that seemed much different in California. The two preceding winters had brought record levels of precipitation, the high country had opened late with snow remaining much later than usual, and there was water everywhere. This October visit to the eastern Sierra came near the end of the second wet summer, and it looked like we were about to be in for another wet winter, with early season storms. Then the tap was shut off, and we experienced three years are terrible drought. These trees and others in the range are now under a great deal of stress, and the past autumn was a bit of a strange one. And now, in the fourth year, the Sierra is still experiencing far below normal snowfall and far above-normal temperatures.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: season

Cottonwood Leaf, Dry Grass, Winter

Riparian Thicket, Yosemite Valley

Forest, Afternoon Light

The Aspen Palette

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