Tag Archives: silhouette

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

Trees and Sunset Sky, Olmsted Point

July 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees growing on granite silhouetted against a colorful sunset sky at Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

This astonishing, magical light occurred just at and right after sunset on the evening of June 18, the day that Tioga Pass finally opened for the 2011 summer season. I earlier posted a vertical format photograph of much the same scene, though with slightly different light – the other photograph was made about a minute after this one and the conditions were changing very rapidly.

The photograph was made from the popular Olmsted Point overlook along the Tioga Pass Road (highway 120), with its well-known view of subalpine Tenaya Lake. Since I have recounted the story of this light in some detail in an earlier post, I’ll keep this description somewhat short, but here is the genera outline. Earlier in the evening I had come here to try to photograph Mount Conness with a long lens. Initially the light was very unpromising, but I observed some things that suggested the possibility of sunset light so I stuck around. Just before sunset, as the sun dropped near the horizon to the west, the light came from below to illuminate the thin, high clouds and produce an amazing color show.

To make the series of photographs of these trees I simply pivoted my tripod around from the direction it had been pointing, towards Mount Conness. The trees are somewhat sparse here since the granite domes and slabs cannot support many of them. The speed of light and color transition was remarkable. At one or more points, as the clouds picked up the sunset glow, the brightness of the light suddenly increased noticeably. The brightest color moved across the sky from east to west, and here the color was just beginning to diminish ever so slightly overhead as it continues to intensify to the west and closer to the horizon.

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

Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset

June 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Trees at Olmsted Point are silhouetted against a brilliantly colorful spring sunset sky, Yosemite National Park.

I think everyone should occasionally get to post a just plain gaudy color sunset – and this is mine. While photographing Mount Conness from Olmsted Point was my primary goal on this evening, I also had some opportunities to swing the tripod around and point at other things from time to time. This is about as close as I can come to capturing the nearly hallucinogenic color of the sky as the brightest cloud illumination was centered directly overhead and beginning to move off to the west.

The color saturation was so intense that I had to under expose this by at least a stop in order to avoid blowing out the red channel and in order to retain some differentiation among the various shadings of color as they transitioned from very pink/red through orange and purple and on towards blue.

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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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Two Oaks, Morning Sun

May 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The springtime morning sun shines through a pair of oak trees in the Calero Hills south of San Jose, California.

On the final day of April and for the first time this season, I found to go for a hike at my favorite local park, a place where I have walked just about every available trail (and invented a few routes of my own) and photographed for a number of years. The park would not seem like anything all that special by comparison to some of the other places I visit, but it is close and I’ve gotten to know it in a way that makes it more special. The place is called the Calero County Park, part of the Santa Clara County Parks system.

The entrance to the park is in a broad valley that is largely occupied by stables. (Or, used to be – it looks like the stables must have closed since last season.) Rising from this valley are the typical grass-covered hills of central and northern California, with oaks and other trees scattered around and, in places, thicker trees and brush. At this time of year, the hills turn what I call “impossibly green” – and if you have seen them on a late-winter or early spring morning you know what I mean.

I started this hike a bit after dawn, so the golden hour light was more or less gone. I had a general idea of photographing some wildflowers (which didn’t happen – it was too windy) and some oak trees that grow alone or in small groups on the grass-covered hills. I passed a small lake – where a single egret often hangs out, but not on this morning – and topped a rise and descended into a small valley from which I have made quite a few photographs of oaks. It didn’t look too promising at first, but at the far end of this area I noticed that a pair of trees were still obscuring the sun and that I might be able to shoot straight into the sun with the trees blocking its disk, and get a photograph including the tree shadows on the hillside grasses.

This turned out to be another of those all-too-common ephemeral photographs in that the sun was starting to rise above the top branches of the tree and would soon be “out in the open,” making it much too bright for what I had in mind. So I worked quickly to set up tripod and camera and select a lens, then frame a composition, focus, and make a series of exposures that might be needed to deal with the huge dynamic range between direct sun and backlit tree trunks. By the time I had everything set up and was ready to shoot the sun had already risen above the upper branches, so I ended up looking for a slightly better shadow and putting the tripod down very low – and this gave me must enough time to make the series of exposures I figured I would need.

In the end, I got lucky. One single shot somehow managed to not blow the sun out too badly yet hold enough detail in the grass that a bit of work in post could bring it back. With all of the potential for lens flare – which I had to some extent in every shot – this one only had two small bits of it, and they were easily dealt with.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Abandoned Mining Cabin Ruins, Panamint Range

April 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Black and white photograph of the ruins of an abandoned mining cabin high in the Panamint Mountain Range of Death Valley National Park.

There are a number of things that make Death Valley National Park, to the best of my knowledge, rather unique. One is the extensive history of human habitation inside the park boundaries, quite a bit of which is visible – though some takes a bit more effort and attention to spot. The history of mining in the park is well-known, and many of the icons of the park have connections to this history. If you visit Furnace Creek, for example, you cannot miss the displays of old wagons and so forth used to move ore out of the Valley. It doesn’t take a lot of careful study to figure out that many park roads originated in an era of prospecting and mining. There are several well-known examples of structures left over from that era in and around the park, too.

It is largely because of this history that many areas of this national park are (or have been – some are now reverting to wilderness status) accessible by gravel road or four-wheel-drive routes. I would argue that you can’t really get to know this park if you just stick to the paved roads and the points of interest that they access. If you drive any of these other routes and keep your eyes open you will often be surprised by the left overs from relatively recent mining and prospecting, much of which isn’t really written about or described in the usual guides to the park. (And I’m not going to offer specific details about where to find such places here, since I don’t want to be even a little bit responsible for damage to them. If you do visit, treat them with care and respect.)

As I drove along a gravel road in one of the many mountain ranges of the park, returning from a site that is somewhat well-known, I began to notice evidence of fairly recent mining and prospecting. Faint tracks depart from the main “road” and cross valleys and hills, here and there tailing piles and mine entrances are visible, and sometimes you come across old structures such as cabins, storage bunkers, or wooden towers above mine entrances. I spotted the ruins of this old cabin above the road at one point and decided to walk up and investigate.

I’m almost always surprised at how “modern” many of the traces found at these places seem to be. I guess I am expecting something from the 1800s, but quite a few of these places look like they were build and occupied much later than that. I find modern things like linoleum flooring or modern-looking nails or electrical wire in many of them. There obviously isn’t much left of this cabin now, but from the detritus lying around near it and the form and materials found here, it must have been a reasonably comfortable place to live. As I walk around such places I often try to imagine what it must have been like to wake up every morning in this silent desert and head out for another day of physical labor.

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