Tag Archives: sky

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Blue Stone Vortex

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Blue Stone Vortex
“Blue Stone Vortex” — Curving and intersecting fractures in Sierra Nevada rock under stormy skies.

While I’m often drawn to the large scale landscapes, intimate landscapes appeal to me, too. The big photos do give the grand perspective of the landscape, but I think that images of smaller elements and components of the larger scene can tell us just as much about a place. And their sometimes-abstract nature lets us see the landscape in new ways that we perhaps had not thought of.

The grand landscape was not cooperating when I I photographed these rocks. It had been raining and it was still very cloudy. Are the rocks really this color? That’s a good question! The landscape looks different under various sorts of light, and often our vision system “corrects” for this and we do not notice it. I knew that the overcast was having an effect, but until I opened this photograph (and others made at the same time) in post, I had not realized just how blue the light was. Sometimes I “correct” these strong colors, but this time I decided to go with 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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lake, Ridges, and Haze

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Lake, Ridges, and Haze
“Lake, Ridges, and Haze” — Hazy morning light on ridges, cliffs, and a subalpine lake, Sierra Nevada.

It is fair to say that I got a lot of photographic mileage out of this view during our stay here a few years back. I’ve shared numerous photographs of it, though in different formats, times of day, and conditions. Despite the presence of so much other visual material, it dominated our consciousness. I suppose that part of the reason is that it was within minutes of our campsite, but it is a remarkable setting, too.

I photographed this version in the morning. At the start of our visit we had quite a lot of rain, but that diminished later on, and the sky was mostly clear on this day. The view looks roughly northeast, so the sun was just clearing the ridges out of the frame to the right. This light, coming in at an angle, illuminated the atmospheric haze and emphasized the atmospheric recession of more distant ridges. It also produced what almost looks like rim light on the exposed places on the face at the left.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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Photographs: England, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Shambles Market

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Shambles Market
“Shambles Market” — The Shambles Market on a cloudy June morning, York, England.

You probably know the feeling. You are in an unfamiliar town. You want breakfast. You head out looking for just the right place, like we did on this morning in York. You think of a particular area where you want to look, but when you arrive you discover that not much is open yet — it is a cloudy morning and still too early for the tourist onslaught. You look at one place but think you’ll look around a bit more. You wander past the little coffee shop, but it looks funky. There are some food trucks, but they don’t have whatever it is you want. So you wander back where you started and enter a little place like this one.

The possibly-contrived cuteness of the place might have initially put me off, but once inside the scones looked good, the bakery smells were anttractive, and they seemed to have the right kinds of coffee. We ordered and went upstairs to wait. When you see this photo of the storefront imagine that it is wider than what you see only by the width of the entrance doorway out of sight to the left. It was a tiny place — barely enough room on the ground floor for two of us to stand at the counter and order. But in had many floors, each equally compact.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Instagram | Flickr | Facebook | Threads | Post | Email

Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Clearing Storm, Lake, and Fog

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Clearing Storm, Lake, and Fog
“Clearing Storm, Lake, and Fog” — Evening fog drifts over moutains around a Sierra Nevada mountain lake as storm clouds clear.

I made this photograph on a rather remarkable Sierra evening. Late the previous day it had started to rain. Contrary to my expectations and experience, this turned out to not be just another afternoon shower — it absolutely poured, confining us to tents for hours and restricting our photography well into the next day. Finally the rain began to let up and we got out, though everything remained gray and wet. It wasn’t until the second evening, right around sunset, that the clouds finally broke enough to let in some light. But what light it was — perhaps a reward for our forbearance during the storm!

This photograph has been sitting in the archives for quite some time. I have looked at it in periodically and puzzled over how to handle it. The challenge was that the sky color was bright and extremely intense, so my exposure had to leave the foreground in deep shadow. This week I came back to the photo and figured out how to process it. Part of the challenge was technical, but it was also aesthetic — a question of how bright to make things and still retain the sense of oncoming twilight.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Instagram | Flickr | Facebook | Threads | Post | Email

Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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