Tag Archives: shoreline

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline*

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Reflections, Rocky Shoreline
Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

* This is the second of two photographs that I’m posting for an unusual reason — after the original post I rethought the aspect ratio of the photograph and decided that I like it in the (unusual for me!) square format. The text below is the same as that used in the original post.

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake.

A group of us recently spent a week camped at 11,000′ in a landscape of water, glaciated rocks, meadows, and high peaks. AS the week went on we gradually pushed out the boundaries of our photographic explorations. My first view of this formation was on my initial scouting trip to this lake — I did not photograph it on that visit, but I made a mental note to return when the light would be more ideal. In this case, “ideal” meant “not in full sun,” so my plan was to come back in the early morning and evening hours. Early morning turned out to be best since the air was still at that hour, leaving the water still enough to produce coherent reflections.

I returned a few mornings later. Demonstrating once again the importance of what I might term “attentive serendipity” in photography, even though I got distracted and arrived at the lake later than planned, the timing turned out to be nearly perfect. I had a few minutes to photograph the larger landscape in the pre-sunlight “quiet light” before moving on to photograph this still-shaded scene. And once I finished here, the sunlight cooperated by arriving at a nearby rocky peninsula and both backlighting a tree and turning the water a lovely deep blue color.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline

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Reflections, Rocky Shoreline
Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Huge rocky slabs meet the shorline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake.

A group of us recently spent a week camped at 11,000′ in a landscape of water, glaciated rocks, meadows, and high peaks. AS the week went on we gradually pushed out the boundaries of our photographic explorations. My first view of this formation was on my initial scouting trip to this lake — I did not photograph it on that visit, but I made a mental note to return when the light would be more ideal. In this case, “ideal” meant “not in full sun,” so my plan was to come back in the early morning and evening hours. Early morning turned out to be best since the air was still at that hour, leaving the water still enough to produce coherent reflections.

I returned a few mornings later. Demonstrating once again the importance of what I might term “attentive serendipity” in photography, even though I got distracted and arrived at the lake later than planned, the timing turned out to be nearly perfect. I had a few minutes to photograph the larger landscape in the pre-sunlight “quiet light” before moving on to photograph this still-shaded scene. And once I finished here, the sunlight cooperated by arriving at a nearby rocky peninsula and both backlighting a tree and turning the water a lovely deep blue color.

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: Sierra Nevada

Glaciated Terrain

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Glaciated Terrain
A Sierra Nevada scene including glaciated slabs, a shallow lake, and old moraines

Glaciated Terrain. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Sierra Nevada scene including glaciated slabs, a shallow lake, and old moraines.

There are quite a few “terrains” in the Sierra Nevada, ranging from foothills oak grasslands through the mid-elevation forest, and on up to the rocky alpine heights. Off all of them, I think my favorite is that found just below the treelike, where granite slabs are frequently interspersed with small trees and meadows, where you are rarely very far from water, and where evidence of the glacial heritage of the range are everywhere. There is virtually no element of this scene that doesn’t owe something to those glaciers — the smoothly rounded slabs of foreground granite, the lake lying in a scooped-out hollow where glaciers converged, the moraines (at least two of which appear in the photograph), and even the line between the tops of the glaciers and the more jagged formations that remained above their reach.

This photograph is also about light, and a more subtle form of it. I composed the scene to exclude as much of the direct morning sun as possible, but yet to take advantage of its presence nearby. One of the favorite forms of light among photographers is that which is reflected into the scene from nearby objects in bright light. Here much of the warmer colored light is of that sort, reflected into the scene from nearby slopes that were already in the direct morning sun. This light fills shadows and can add soft color to the cold tones in the shadows.

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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Two Trees

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Two Trees
Two trees and their reflections along the rocky shoreline of a Sierra Nevada lake

Two Trees. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two trees and their reflections along the rocky shoreline of a Sierra Nevada lake.

Last week I spent a few days in the Yosemite high country around Tuolumne Meadows. I had a few things in mind. Visiting one of my favorite places in the Sierra was, of course, one of them, as was making photographs in this location. I also had a more practical goal in mind — spending a bit of time adapting to elevation for an upcoming trip that has me “going high” on the first day. With that last goal in mind, each day I picked a hike that covered some miles, that climbed, and that had me over 10,000.

I had been planning to camp outside the park to the east of Tioga Pass, but much to my surprise there was still “space available” at Tuolumne Meadows when I passed through, so I changed plans and got a campsite there. This meant that when I wasn’t otherwise occupied, I could easily get to some of the well-known locations along this roadway. That’s just what I did for this photograph, getting up early and arriving here well before the day’s crowds… at an early enough hour that the place actually provided some solitude.

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.