Tag Archives: sierra

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Last Light And Sunset Clouds

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Last Light And Sunset Clouds
Colorful sunset clouds as the last light touches the summits of the Sierra Nevada crest

Last Light And Sunset Clouds. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful sunset clouds as the last light touches the summits of the Sierra Nevada crest.

I think of this as the “night of miracle light.” Sierra Nevada folks know that the predominant condition in the summer months is clear, blue skies… which many people regard as a virtue but which photographers often lament. It probably seems very strange to non-photographers to hear us exclaim things like, “Darn! I had seven days of boring perfect blue skies!” We want some clouds! The come from time to time, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

During our weeklong stay in the Eastern Sierra high country we also had mostly blue sky weather. We did get a bit of rain on the day we hiked in and, surprisingly, again on the day we hiked out. But in between, with one notable exception, the weather was what normal people might call “perfect.” But then, there was this evening, the final one of the trip. Very late in the day, we began to see lovely, puffy clouds starting to assemble above our valley and especially above the higher peaks the surrounded the upper end at the Sierra crest. At sunset the clouds became spectacularly beautiful as they were illuminated by sunset light coming from below and to the west. All of us stopped what we were doing and assembled in a group near our camp to watch this lovely luminous benediction to our trip.

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

Reflections, Rocky Shoreline*

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Reflections, Rocky Shoreline
“Reflections, Rocky Shoreline” — Huge rocky slabs meet the shoreline 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.

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.

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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: Sierra Nevada

Two Snags, Morning Light

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Two Snags, Morning Light
Two snags stretch toward the sky below an Eastern Sierra Nevada peak in morning light

Two Snags, Morning Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two snags stretch toward the sky below an Eastern Sierra Nevada peak in morning light.

This location was a short walk above the Eastern Sierra backcountry base camp where our group spent a week in late August and the very beginning of September. We were camped at about 11,000′ of elevation, where the trees start to give out just below timberline… and where the landscape’s main feature is rock, including granite slabs, glacial moraines, talus fields, and rugged high peaks.

I walked up here early one morning with a plan to photograph a subject just a bit farther away, but I got distracted by beautiful and developing light. I had noted these snags several days earlier and made a plan to return to photograph them in better light. As I arrived the dead trees were still in shadow, but within moments the sun/shadow line reached the trees, and I made this photograph just as the entire height of the trees came into the light.

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: Sierra Nevada

Mountain Stream

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Mountain Stream
A Sierra Nevada stream cascades over and around rocks

Mountain Stream. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Sierra Nevada stream cascades over and around rocks.

To be honest, photographing moving water like this can easily become addictive, and there are endless variations on how you might do it. Shutter speed variations allow a range of interpretations between stopped motion and motion-suggesting blur. Zoom in close and the water can be the entire subject, or work from a bit more distance and incorporate the surrounding terrain. Choose your time of day and get warm or cool coloration. Photograph at a time when the water reflects light on nearby objects and introduce a wider range of colors into the composition.

During our one-week stay high in the Eastern Sierra we were fortunate to have many opportunities to photograph water, ranging from many nearby alpine lakes to the abundant creeks and cascades that were still flowing despite the rather late date in the season. One evening I wandered a few hundred feet down below our base camp to this area where I had walked this creek a day or two earlier, and I spent a good deal of time photographing it.

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.