Tag Archives: shadow

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

Fog and Trees, Yosemite Valley

November 29, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Forest trees are almost completely obscured by evening fog in Yosemite Valley.

If you have been watching some of my recently posted photographs, you have perhaps figured out that I’m working on a series of photographs in which mist and fog and clouds obscure to a greater or lesser extent some underlying elements of the landscape. (If you haven’t been watching my recent posts… you can still be my friend! ;-) In a few of them I am seeing how far I can take this and still have an interesting photograph. This one marks a further step along that path in that at least half of the scene has little or no detail, being almost completely obscured by drifting fog, and even in the areas where trees are still visible the details are very muted.

I’m thinking about just how little detail I can retain in the scene and still retain a sense of form. And this isn’t the most extreme in the series at all. I’m working on another one which retains less “solid” detail than this one. (It may be that it works as a print but perhaps not as a web jpg, in which case I may not post it here – we’ll see.)

The photograph was made at – icon alert! – Wawona Tunnel View above Yosemite Valley on an evening when I had little interest in shooting the classic view of the Valley itself, but had instead gone there because I was almost certain that fog would form among the trees on the Valley floor as the temperature dropped following a rainy day. If anyone had noticed me shooting on that evening among the line-up of dozens of photographers, they might have been perplexed as to why I was aiming a very large lens down when the famous view was obviously straight ahead! ;-)

This photograph is 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

Grazing Cattle and Aspen Groves, Conway Summit

November 1, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Cattle graze in front of large aspen groves near Conway Summit, California.

Just about anyone who has every photographed aspens in the area around Lee Vining is probably familiar with this location – and I’ve certainly shot there quite a few times. From highway 395 the aspens extend west and up toward the peaks of the Sierra crest, and the at the right hour in the late afternoon the backlight can light up the leaves of the trees. When I visited this time the trees were in transition with some still green, others very colorful, and some almost leafless already. I was also lucky to have some clouds at the end of several cloudless days of photography. (Normal people like perfect blue sky, but photographers are not normal – we tend to like weather!) When I saw the clouds starting to form above the crest early in the afternoon I thought that something interesting might happen later near Conway so I made a point of heading that direction.

This photograph features, of all things, cattle – not my usual subject, perhaps! The area where these aspens grow seems to be at least as much a pasture as it is aspen groves, and I’ve seen cattle grazing in this spot before. (See comments for a note from a member of the family that owns the land.) As the clouds created shadows over the higher slopes in the background, for a moment the sun still hit the foreground trees and these cattle.

This shot also ties in with my recent post on using various focal lengths for landscape photography, in that this photograph was made with what some might regard as an unlikely landscape lens, a 100-400mm zoom! But in this case, this lens at 250mm was just what I needed to more tightly frame the bit of foreground pasture and sunlit trees and compress the distance between them and the shadowed hills beyond.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

McGee Mountain and Little Alkali Lake, Dawn

October 21, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light in the eastern Sierra on McGee Mountain, reflected in Little Alkali Lake, Owens Valley, California.

There are higher peaks along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada – much higher! – but I can think of few that catch the dawn light more beautifully than McGee Mountain just north of McGee Creek in the area around Mammoth Lakes and Crowley Lake. The slopes of the mountain are open without obstruction to the dawn light as it works its way down from the peaks, and the light passes across the face and accents the relief of alternating valleys and aretes. On this early October morning an early season storm had left the upper slopes covered with snow, and beyond the slopes of McGee Creek Canyon leading up toward Mount Morgan are still in shade.

I photographed this scene from well out into Owens Valley, where I was almost alone apart from an occasional car passing by on the distant road – and apart from the bellowing beasts in a nearby herd of cattle! Steam rises from some of the many hot springs in this geothermally-active area of the eastern Sierra, and a bit of mist floats above the reflective surface of this alkali lake.

This photograph is 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

Mount Morgan and Slopes of McGee Mountain, Morning

October 18, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light on the lower slopes of McGee Mountain, the McGee Creek Canyon area and snow-capped Mount Morgan, with Owens Valley sagebrush and hills in the foreground.

I began my early morning shoot in Owens Valley near a small lake further to the east where I wanted to photograph dawn light. I had a plan to shoot a few other subjects in the valley and back toward the Sierra crest as the sun rose and the light changed, and part of this plan included driving along a gravel road I know to a spot where I had photographed before to try to combine the high desert sagebrush and rolling hills with some of the tall and rugged, snow-topped peaks along the escarpment of the eastern Sierra. I found a spot in the general area of where I wanted to photograph and then wandered off down a small dirt track to find a location that would put the foreground shadow across the lower part of the frame.

The area of the Sierra in this photograph includes the sunlit lower slopes of McGee Mountain on the right, McGee Creek Canyon beyond that, and ridges leading to the snow-capped summit of Mount Morgan. I’m not certain whether they are visible in this photograph, but beyond that lies Pioneer Basin (on the other side of the crest) and a group of four peaks named for the “Railroad Barons” of the 1800s: Crocker, Stanford, Huntington, and Hopkins.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: owens, valley, sage, sagebrush, hills, high, desert, mount, morgan, snow, capped, peak, ridg

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: shadow

McGee Mountain and Little Alkali Lake, Dawn

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

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