Tag Archives: seki

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Showers

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Sierra Showers
Afternoon thundershower clouds reflected in the surface of a raindrop-dappled alpine lake, Kings Canyon National Park.

Sierra Showers. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon thundershower clouds reflected in the surface of a raindrop-dappled alpine lake, Kings Canyon National Park.

As I was getting ready to post this photograph I was pondering, as usual, what to write about it. As I considered the focus of what I ended up writing here today it occurred to me that this one photograph could be the starting point for an entire book. (Don’t worry, I’ll keep this post considerably shorter than that.) It could naturally lead to subjects including my visits and return visits to certain locations in the Sierra, the experience of spending long periods in the backcountry, what and how to see there, the sensory experiences of things like afternoon rain, how non-iconic subjects evoke these things, my good fortune in photographing the backcountry in the company of good friends during the last decade, and much more…

But that’s far too much for this post, so I’ll just share a little background. A group of five of us isolated ourselves at a very high backcountry location for a week back in 2013. We photographed morning and evening every day, in very diverse conditions, and we hung out together through the slower midday hours. There were many lakes nearby, and on this afternoon I had walked the short distance to one of them and was photographing when the afternoon showers began. For me, this photograph conjures up all of the associations I have with that trip and with afternoons like this one.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Tree Trunks, Tyndall Creek

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Tree Trunks, Tyndall Creek
The trunks and branchs of a group of closely spaced trees high in the Sierra Nevada backcountry

Tree Trunks, Tyndall Creek. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The trunks and branchs of a group of closely spaced trees high in the Sierra Nevada backcountry.

A simple photograph of some tree trunks, of a sort you could perhaps find in locations all over the higher portions of the Sierra Nevada, can evoke a surprising number of memories and associations. While I might walk past such a thing and not take much notice, I have often spent time in the company of such trees — pausing for lunch on the trail, living among them in a high country campsite.

Some of these memories are general, which is not a surprise given that such trees are everywhere. In that light, I’ve often contemplated how such trees seem to occupy a middle ground between the relatively short lives of creatures like ourselves and the “deep time” of rocks. The trees live hundreds of years, and as they adapt to their rooted locations they can sometimes seem to have more in common with the rocks than with us. Other associations are quite specific — and this photograph takes me back to a specific location along the JMT, a place I’ve camped a number of times, and to the people I was traveling with and those we encountered on a couple of specific days.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Intertwined Trunks

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Intertwined Trunks
Tightly laced tree trunks, Southern Sierra Nevada

Intertwined Trunks. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tightly laced tree trunks, Southern Sierra Nevada.

This is an older photograph that has languished in my raw file archives for nearly a decade. Back in 2010 I was on a long Southern Sierra backcountry trip with a group of friends — roughly speaking we made a giant semi-circle around Mount Whitney, starting southeast of that peak and coming out over a week later at a point considerably north. A milestone on this trip was realizing — finally! — that re-climbing that iconic peak is less profitable than spending time in many other equally beautiful places in the Sierra. At several points on this trip we found ourselves in lonely, less-visited spots, and I treasure the trip for that reason. These trees were at one of our campsites, in a location essentially right at timberline.

Everyone’s work habits are unique, but for me it is important to periodically go back and look through older photographs that didn’t “go anywhere” at the time. I inevitably find images that are worth the second look. I’ve often pondered how and why this happens. Among my theories: perhaps I simply moved on to quickly to other projects at the time, possibly I didn’t really understand how to “see” the image, my interests and perspectives have changed. Regardless, this is one reason that I’m hesitant to delete a lot of raw files — all too often I’ve gone back and found something that I was glad I kept!

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lakeshore, Evening

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Lakeshore, Evening
A few sunset clouds reflected in the quiet surface of a backcountry Sierra Nevada lake.

Lakeshore, Evening. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A few sunset clouds reflected in the quiet surface of a backcountry Sierra Nevada lake.

Periodically I find myself going back to my archives and looking through older photographs, typically images that I made years ago and sort of left behind as I went on to work on newer things. These reviews often have a couple of wonderful consequences. Often I rediscover a photograph that I had originally neglected, perhaps because it worked in a different way than what I originally imagined or possibly because I wasn’t patient enough at the time. The distance provided by a few years of time often allows me to see the image in ways I missed at first. In addition, these older photograph bring back wonderful memories — of the subjects, for sure, but also of the trips themselves and the people I traveled with.

I made this photograph on a long southern Sierra backcountry trip with a group of long-time backcountry buddies — folks I have backpacked with many times over the years. On this trip we were down to our core group of four, and we traveled into one of the highest, alpine regions of the range, into the upper Kern River drainage of Sequoia National Park. Those who know this region won’t be surprised to hear that we had to cross several very high passes, that we were out for over a week, and that we got into places where we saw very few other visitors. I made the photograph on a lovely, lazy evening, near a lake we ended up at almost by accident — a place that turned out to be utterly scenic, extremely quiet, and almost devoid of visible signs of humans.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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