Tag Archives: sky

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.

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

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, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Evening Clouds, Tuolumne River Valley

November 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening clouds from dissipating afternoon thunderstorms in early evening light above the Tuolumne River Valley, Yosemite National Park.

I recently posted a photograph of wildly colorful sunset clouds made a bit earlier on this same evening this past September as I was concluding a week-long photography backpack into the Yosemite back-country. By the time I had the photograph shown here, the most psychedelic of the sunset colors had begun to fade (though the reddish coloration on the granite is from that light) and I turned my attention to the thinning clouds.

Not much earlier, these clouds had been part of a massive line-up of huge thunderstorms over Yosemite high-country. I had escaped the rains since I was now in the relative lowlands around Glen Aulin, but it was clear that these had been some powerful localized storms. But as typically happens on many Sierra evenings, the giant storms soon dissipated and the clouds thinned to transparency as the day came to an end. By the time I made this photograph only a bit of direct sunlight was striking the tops of the highest remaining clouds.

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

Dissipating Storm Clouds, Sunset

November 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Sunset light on dissipating thunderstom clouds above granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Late on this September afternoon in the Yosemite back-country I had a good idea that something might happen around sunset, but I could not have known in advance just how intense the cloud color would turn out to be. The set-up was classic. Thunder storms had built up throughout the afternoon, and by late in the day I would see and hear large storms to my north and east – though I remained right on the edge of the storm potential as I was a bit further west. As evening approached the cloud-building forces began to diminish, leaving the tops of the larger cells unsupported, and they began to thin and stretch westward, curving up and over my location along the Tuolumne River.

Knowing that interesting light of one sort or another was probable, I walked to an area of granite slabs and bowls that I had photographed when visiting this area at the start of my trip nearly a week earlier. As I considered a few photographs of the granite and trees in that area, my attention kept being drawn to the sky. At first it remained a relatively low contrast mass of gray, though the thinning clouds started to allow views through falling virga towards more distant clouds that rose into the sunlight. Then, as the sun dropped and the foreground lost the direct light, the clouds began to light up and take on wildly saturated colors. (A technical note: in many of the photographs, though not in this one, the dynamic range between cloud highlights and foreground was so large that it required multiple exposures separated by up to five stops to capture it all!)

I moved to the base of the granite bowl in which I had photographed rocks and small trees a week before when I saw these spectacular clouds building to the north west. The color was simply unbelievable – and you can see that the intense saturated light was not just in the sky, but that it also colored the granite near the bottom of the image. For this photograph I used a short focal length to try to take in a large section of the flowing and wildly shaped and colored clouds.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sky

Glacial Erratics

Glacial Erratics, Near Glen Aulin

Dissipating Storm Clouds, Sunset

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