Tag Archives: silhouette

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

Glacial Erratics

December 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Glacial erratics rest on top of a low granite dome in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

“Erratics” are boulders left behind in the wake of the passage of glaciers, and left behind when the glaciers disappeared. They are found all over the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada and some of the most striking examples are found in surprising places – like along the top of this granite dome-like ridge in the Yosemite back-country along the Tuolumne River. After spending decades in these mountains I sometimes take these rocks for granted (and for “granite…” ;-), but every so often it hits me just how strange and wonderful it is to find these large boulders sitting in unlikely places.

I made this photograph in the late afternoon as the lowering sun began to cast longer shadows and as earlier clouds began to dissipate above the distant ridges. The Tuolumne River begins it steep descent into the lowlands between my position and the distant ridge covered with granite and trees.

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

Glacial Erratics, Near Glen Aulin

November 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three glacial erratic boulders atop a granite dome near Glen Aulin, Yosemite National Park.

Looking for something to photograph one evening during my September back-country photography trip into the Glen Aulin and McCabe Lakes area of Yosemite National Park, I climbed up from our camp site to the top of this small granite dome or “whaleback” above the valley of Glen Aulin. The dome is merely the most open and exposed portion of a ridge of more durable rock that rises a ways up the slope from near where we were camped, and from its “summit” I had a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding landscape as the day came to an end.

When I first arrived at this spot more than an hour earlier, the sky was almost completely clouded over. This was one of those situations in which the immediate photographic prospects seemed quite limited, with gray skies and murky atmosphere, but with some potential for interesting things to happen if the clouds thinned as sunset approached. So I decided to stick around in this spot rather than wandering around looking for something else, and in the end the clouds did thin. Before I made this photograph, one of the last of the evening, I had managed to find a range of subjects as the light changed: the light from breaks in the clouds began to move across a forest to my right and light a small prominence nearby; light coming over the ridge at the far right back-lit some haze behind trees on a lower ridge that was closer to me; and finally the remaining clouds took on a bit of color right as the sun dropped below the horizon.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Dew on Lupine and Grasses

October 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dew from morning fog collects on meadow grasses and lupine flowers, Santa Cruz Mountains.

It is a wonder that I even consider this photograph worth posting. (Hope I’m not wrong about this!) I made this photograph six years ago when I was doing my very first investigation of digital SLR shooting after having been a film photographer (at least apart from some earlier more or less point and shoot stuff) for many years. To “test the waters” I had picked up a very inexpensive and modest Canon “Digital Rebel” XT DSLR and a single zoom lens. The camera actually wasn’t a bad performer at all. While these models were small and lightweight and lacked some features of their more expensive brethren, they had essentially the same sensors and for those who shoot the way I generally did the other features were mostly superfluous. The first DSLR-sourced print I ever sold came from this camera. The lens was another story. For my “test” I simply picked up a reasonably inexpensive wide range 17-85mm variable aperture lens. This lens has its pluses and minuses (read more here), but for me the minuses were eventually deal-breakers. However, this little handheld photograph was made with that very modest lens, and as long as I don’t try to make it too big I think it works fine.

The scene is a typical one in the oak and grassland areas of Central California that surround the area where I live. This particular scene was at Castle Rock State Park, in the Santa Cruz Mountains between Silicon Valley and the coast. At this time of year the weather can evolve in any of several directions, including rain, fog, brilliant sun and heat, and more – but on this day I was shooting in very damp coastal fog along the top of the ridges.

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

Morning Light on Shoreline Trees

October 3, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Early morning light illuminates shoreline trees, meadows and rocks at McCabe lake, with talus and forest-covered slopes beyond, Yosemite National Park.

We were camped at this lake for several days, and by this morning I had developed a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to photograph at different times of the day. My main interest in the early morning was in shooting almost straight back into the sun as it rose above the ridges to the east and began to backlight the lodgepole pines around the lake, especially those along the rocky and meadowy shoreline on the west and south sides. So on this morning, my second-to-last at this lake, I was up reasonably early and off to the other side of the lake before sunrise.

Once I reached the other side of the lake I had two tasks in mind. One was to make a few photographs in the very soft light before the sun reached this area. The other was to find and remember several compositions that might well work when the sun actually arrived. Around the west end of the lake I found several that lined up some of the small shoreline peninsulas and the rocks along the shoreline. After photographing those low light subjects for a while, I noticed that the light was beginning to strike a few trees along the west end of the lake, so I quickly got back in position to start doing the photographs as the sun began to arrive.

This morning presented one slightly unusual shooting challenge. For so late in the season there were a lot of bugs flying around the edges of the lake, including a surprising number of mosquitos. Unfortunately, the same light that so nicely picks up the edges of the backlit trees… also nicely highlighted all of the flying insects along the shoreline! These insects can show up in photographs as hundreds of small to larger blurring streaks – which must be laboriously and individually cloned out in post. Fortunately, I have a way to deal with this and make the process a little easier. I made two exposures of each composition, separated by a second or two. Since it was windless, the trees barely moved at all – but the bugs did move. Since their traces appear at different places in the two images, I can superimpose them in Photoshop and then mask out each bug in the upper image, substituting the corresponding bug free portion of the image from the layer below. It is still a bit of work, but not nearly as bad as trying to clone all of these problems out.

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