Tag Archives: sheep

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Utah

Three Sisters, Sheep Rock

Image July 3, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Three Sisters, Sheep Rock, and other red rock formations, Arches National Park.

There are so many things bound up in photographs like this one that it would be possible to write a book about it. This was my first visit to this landscape and, as such, it was part of the rare experience of being in a place that I did not know at all. It also raises questions about the value of photographing icons — hint: there is some, but it is complicated. It is a photograph I made some years ago, bringing up the value of revisiting photographs that were originally left behind or perhaps interpreted differently. It brings up the questions about what landscape photographers do when the landscape is inaccessible.

I made the photograph during perhaps my first hour or two in Arches National Park. For someone who read Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” decades ago, this visit was a long time coming. And, aside from that book, I came with few preconceptions about the park, and I had not researched before arriving. Consequently, as we drove in late the first afternoon I had almost no idea of what I would see. I was amazed.

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: Sierra Nevada

Sheep, Morning Fog

November 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of sheep grazes under morning fog in an eastern Sierra Nevada meadow

There is a long tradition of grazing sheep (and cattle) in parts of the Sierra Nevada. Many years ago they were taken to the high country in the summer season – a practice that Muir railed against, describing their effect on the vegetation of the high Sierra as that of “hoofed locusts.” Today we don’t see grazing in the high country anymore since these areas are now protected as wilderness, outside or inside national parks in many cases. But the tradition continues in the lower country along the eastern side of the range.

For many years I have seen the occasional flock of sheep on the east side, sometimes close to the mountains (as is the case here) and more often a bit further out into the semi-desert highlands. Often there will be a shepherd standing guard and perhaps a sheep dog or two. (One flock we saw this time also contained, for reasons that I can’t quite understand, a single black mule.) Sometimes you will see the small trailer nearby where the shepherd lives. The flock in this photograph was one of two very large groups in close proximity to one another in an area south of Mammoth Lakes and right alongside highway 395. I had driven here to try to photograph the morning fog that was drifting from Crowley Lake, and we got there just as it was clearing from this spot, with light beams shining through the breaks in the cloud.

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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah, Photographs: Wildlife

Three Bighorn Sheep

December 8, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three bighorn sheep grazing in an area of sandstone slabs, Zion National Park

I have been fascinated by the bighorn sheep since an experience I had many years ago in the eastern Sierra Nevada. I was on my first solo backpacking trip – oddly enough, this first solo was a two-week trip! – and I was hiking up into a slightly more remote area not far from Rae Lakes. In typical climbing mode, I was trudging up a steep, rocky trail with my head mostly down, and not paying complete attention to my larger surroundings. All of a sudden I heard a tremendous clattering of rocks very close by, perhaps no more than a couple dozen feet away, and having no idea what would cause such a thing my response was mild panic. I quickly looked up and saw three bighorns very close to me, apparently as surprised by me as I was by them. I immediately began to drop my pack so that I could get to my camera, envisioning a photograph of these noble-looking creatures against the background of this rocky slope. I quickly removed the pack, grabbed my camera, and rose back up to make a photograph… only to see the rear ends of the departing critters perhaps a few hundred yards away on the steep talus slope.

The circumstances of this photograph were much less dramatic, I must admit. While driving along the Mount Carmel Highway over the high country of Zion National Park we simply looked up and saw a small herd or a dozen or more of the animals right above the roadway. I knew they were in the area since earlier I had heard rockfall far above the road, looked up, and seen two of them grazing very high on the slope. But to see such a large group this close was a bit of a surprise. Since I was traveling light on this trip I did not have my longest lens, so I worked with what I had and settled in to see what might develop. The larger group clustered around a bush a bit too far up the slope – and they were apparently not intrigued with the idea of posing, as they stood around with their butts pointing in my direction! One or two of them separated from the main group and soon this group of three made its way down across the sandstone to some brush a bit closer to me.

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

Sheep Peak, McCabe Lakes Basin, Sunset

October 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The last light of the day touches the top of Sheep Peak in the McCabe Lakes Basin, Yosemite National Park.

This was a beautiful and fun evening! We were camped at the lower lake in this basin for a few days. The routine, roughly speaking goes something like this: Up before dawn and off to photograph some morning subject until the light goes or the energy wears down; back to camp for breakfast; do camp chores and generally hang out and shoot the breeze into the afternoon; dinner sometime around 3:00 or 4:00; then off to whatever locations is on the agenda for the evening shoot; back to camp after dark. On this evening we all were on the same page and we all headed up to this lake, a few hundred feet higher and no more than a mile from our camp.

The walk was steep but mostly pleasant, at least as long as one went relatively slowly and stayed out of the creek with its willow thickets and instead found a route through the forest nearby. Eventually the route – there is no trail – began to level out at a meadowy area below the lake. This was gave a false sense that the climb was over, but at least the walk up the meadow was very enjoyable, as the small outlet stream twisted through grassy meadow and past the occasional boulder and some trees, with the higher peaks visible above. At the upper end of this meadow was the lake’s basin, with a tall peak on top of the headwall at the upper end, forest beyond the shoreline meadows to the left, and rugged talus slopes and rocky peaks along the right shoreline.

Here we split up and looked for our own shots. As I sometimes do, I found “the spot” and more or less worked it until the light went away. I walked along the thin shoreline meadow, resisting the temptation to just set up and start shooting, and eventually came to this little group of shoreline rocks and trees that I could use as the close element of photographs of the lake and the peaks beyond as the day came to an end.

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