Tag Archives: sky

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

Last Light, Mount Conness

July 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The final evening alpenglow illuminates the summit ridge of Mount Conness and the west face of Medlicott Dome in the Yosemite National Park high country.

This will be my final photograph of Mount Conness from the evening of June 18, the day that Tioga Pass Road opened this year and the day of one of the most spectacular Yosemite high country sunsets in recent memory. It will be the final both in the sense that I think I’ve now shared the best of the group of images of this sunset and in the sense that it was literally my final exposure of the evening.

The short back-story is that what started out as a fairly unimpressive evening (at least in the photographic sense) transformed over a short period into something extraordinary as the sun dropped to the horizon west of the Sierra and illuminated the clouds from below, creating rare and very special alpenglow conditions over a wide area of the Sierra. (During the week that followed quite a few people commented on this amazing light, which they had witnessed from locations as distant as Mono Lake on the east side and the Central Valley to the west.)

When I made this photograph the show was coming to an end. At this point the sun had already set a few minutes earlier – the exposure was made around 8:45 p.m. – and the light was low enough to require a six-second exposure. While it may seem like Mount Conness (the tallest peak near the left on the skyline) and other features are receiving direct sunlight, this is actually the remaining post-sunset glow in the western sky.

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

Mount Gibbs, Frozen Pond, Morning

July 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Dawn light on the snow-capped summit of Mount Gibbs above a frozen pond, Yosemite National Park.

This small pond is perhaps familiar to visitors to Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Pass, though more likely with a different appearance. Here, early on a cold morning on the day after Tioga Pass opened for the season, the pond is still mostly frozen and it is surrounded by deep snow banks. The summit of Mount Gibbs is just touched by the first morning light as it passes through clouds over the Sierra crest.

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

Mammoth Peak and Kuna Crest, Overflowing Tuolumne River

July 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mammoth Peak and the Kuna Crest loom above as the Tuolumne River overflows its banks and floods surrounding meadows on a frosty spring morning, Yosemite National Park.

As I drove from Lee Vining Canyon over Tioga Pass and toward the Tenaya Lake area early in the morning, I came to the Tuolumne River where it passes under the bridge beneath the highway in the Tuolumne Meadows area. Just at about this moment the sun was rising high enough to begin to warm the frost covered meadow, at least the parts of it that were not flooded by the high water of the Tuolumne. Overnight it had risen almost to the level of the bridge and was so high that after passing under the bridge a small portion split off and headed into the trees to the right of the main branch. In a few weeks this flooded area and its reflecting surface will be gone, and there will just be a meadow and people will hike though it.

The backlight comes across the shoulder of Mammoth Peak, the high point near the end of the long snow-covered ridge of Kuna Crest, which runs parallel to Lyell Canyon toward Donohue Pass and the Sierra Crest.

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