Tag Archives: season

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley

Long Valley Ranch Building

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Long Valley Ranch Building
“Long Valley Ranch Building” — Long Valley ranch building with autumn morning mist

This is the same ranch that is pictured in the photograph I posted yesterday, though this photograph was made two years earlier. The ranch is out on the less-traveled back roads of Long Valley, not far from the resort town of Mammoth Lakes. That said, there isn’t anything remotely resort-like about this place, which gives every appearance of being a working ranch with cattle and horses and run-down outbuildings.

I love this area in the fall when the temperatures drop and the steam from the geothermal sources of hot water can rise into the morning light. In the right conditions, small columns of mist rise all over the valley. This particular spot has a lot of water, most notably nearby Hot Creek, which is, uh, hot. As I do so often, here I chose to photograph almost directly into the morning sun, which creates and extremely bright and luminous quality in the mist and which places the shaded side of the building toward the camera in the lower part of the frame.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Morning Frost, Fog, and Trees

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Morning Frost, Fog, and Trees
Morning Frost, Fog, and Trees

Morning Frost, Fog, and Trees. San Joaquin Valley, California. January 1, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Foggy sunrise light on San Joaquin Valley trees and winter frost

This is quite literally a photograph of the dawn of 2015, made as the sun rose on January 1, 2015. A group of photographer friends has developed what seems to be becoming a tradition: meeting before dawn at a central California location to greet the first sunrise of the year, and then spending the day photographing wildlife and landscape, sharing lunch and stories, and generally having a great time. (This was the third New Year’s Day we have done this.) I suppose that an added benefit of this is that getting up at 4:00 AM on New Year’s Day means that staying up to midnight the night before is not an option!

This place is often very foggy at this time of year — the sort of fog that slows you down to a crawl as you drive along Central Valley back roads. It was supposed to be clear and cold on New Year’s Day. It certainly was cold — 23 degrees at one point. But although it was clear everywhere else, we still have fog in the early morning. We headed out to a spot where we thought the wildlife and sunrise light would be great and waited for dawn. Even though the spectacular sunrise was playing out to my east, I loved the way the light and fog and frost worked together on this scene to my north.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls

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Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls
“Cottonwood Tree and Canyon Walls” — Red sandstone canyon walls tower above a lone cottonwood tree with early fall colors.

This tree is becoming my favorite (or maybe only second favorite…) tree in this part of Utah. It grows in the bottom of a canyon in a place that requires a bit of hiking — and a bit of driving — to access. It is perhaps not all that much better than hundreds or thousands of other trees in such places, but it happens to be one that I saw and photographed!

A group of photographers walked down this canyon on a beautiful October day when sunlight filtered down into the canyon from high above. We were in no hurry, and we frequently stopped to work a particular subject and often separated as each of us focused on his or her personal discoveries. This section of the canyon is one of those where you have route options — you could either walk down the bottom of the canyon in the creek bed (which I did on my walk back out) or you could take a slight shortcut up and across the higher ground on the inside of one of the bends in the canyon. For no particular reason that I can recall now, I decided to take the higher route in this spot and as a result I ended up with this view of the lone cottonwood tree tucked into the canyon at the base of this gigantic sandstone cliff, the intensity of the color of its autumn foliage increased by the soft, reflected canyon light.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Merced River, Branches, El Capitan

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Merced River Reflections
Merced River Reflections

Merced River Reflections. Yosemite Valley, California. November 30, 2005. © Copyright 2005 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Branches in the still water of the Merced River with floating autumn leaves and the reflection of El Capitan, Yosemite Valley.

This photograph is almost a bit of an optical trick. I’ll let you look for a second and figure it out…

… Does it make sense now? The foreground is composed of some intertwining dead branches just above the surface of a very still section of the quiet, late autumn Merced River in Yosemite Valley. The leaves floating on and just beneath the surface of the water give it away. Because there are so many branches, their dark reflections seem, to me at least, to almost merge with the shapes of the actual branches, creating a complex pattern. And, reflected in the surface of the water and appearing as a backdrop to these elements, is the sunlit face of El Capitan.

I would love to tell a great story about making this photograph… but I don’t remember making it! I discovered it only recently while reviewing all of my old raw files, and all I can say for sure is that I made it on one of my annual late October trips to The Valley to photograph the fall colors. For those who follow the technical stuff, I made this photograph with some pretty low-level gear back at a time when I was experimenting with my first DSLR. The camera was the very humble (but better than some think, at least for this sort of thing!) Canon Digital Rebel XT, an early 8 MP body. Even more humble was the lens, the not so swell EFS 17-85mm Canon lens.

(Note: This was originally posted on September 21, 2011. I’m moving this photograph back up on the home page today as this is a new revision of the original photograph — the date of the revision is December 26, 2014)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.