Tag Archives: slab

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

Plants and Fractured Granite

November 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Various rain-moistened plants growing in a fracture in lichen-encrusted glacial granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

This photograph was made in almost exactly the same spot as the photograph I posted yesterday, in an area of water-stained granite along the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. Not only was I fortunate to have soft light, but it was cloudy and it had been raining lightly just before we went out to shoot. You can’t ask for much better conditions for such a subject: soft light from the clouds, colors saturated by the moisture, and a few small drops of rain still on the leaves of the plants. (The latter may not quite be visible in this little jpg image.)

I’m always on the lookout for this little intimate landscapes, especially if they include Sierra granite. I had been wandering around this area trying to find ways to make compositions out of the reddish and rain-moistened rock, shooting trees and small plants and even a few isolated rocks. This plant was growing out of a narrow crack and hanging downward, its green contrasting with the reddish-brown color of the rocks . The arrangement of the nearly vertical crack, the diagonal boundaries between the red rock and the gray rock, and the mottled texture of the lichen also caught my eye.

When I share a photograph like this one, I’m reminded of my friend Mike, a retired Yosemite ranger, who pointedly reminded me once that sometimes there really is no good reason to name the precise location of such a scene. The location is irrelevant to the photograph, similar little scenes are repeated thousands of times over throughout the Sierra, and it isn’t really about the specific place at all.

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

Tree and Stained Granite

November 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree grows from a crack in red-stained granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Back in mid-September of this year I joined a group of five other photographers for a bit more than a week of photography in the High Sierra back-country of Yosemite National Park, going out along the Tuolumne River and spending some significant time in two locations and having several days to photograph at each of them. The first few days were spent along the Tuolumne in a place where a short hike led to a beautiful bowl of smooth granite slabs interrupted by some trees and stained by seepage from a band of reddish rocks above. In some ways this might have seemed like a tricky spot to photograph since it is in the bottom of a canyon and the light is blocked to the east and somewhat blocked to the west. But I like the indirect light found in shaded areas after dawn and before sunset, so I went back to this area on at least three days to photograph in this diffused, soft light.

The rocks are part of a large area of granite slabs that this non-geologist assumes were carved and smoothed by glaciers traveling down from the peaks above the Tuolumne area. In this spot the formations include large areas of smooth and curved granite surfaces, areas that have been pock-marked by erosion and water, cracks of various sizes ranging from incipient to gigantic, and trees and other plants growing anywhere they can find footing: tiny cracks, larger cracks like this one, collections of sand and debris in low spots, and so on. I came back to this tree and some of its neighbors several times and came to think of it as the “bonsai tree.”

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

Trees and Granite Cliffs, Evening Light

September 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Evening sun backlights trees ascending granite slopes in front of cliffs, Yosemite National Park.

This is very similar to a photograph I posted very soon after returning from this trip about a week ago – the previous one was a portrait orientation variation on this landscape orientation version. The beautiful conjunction of trees, granite, and evening light occurred along the Tuolumne River in an area not far from where the river leaves is wide and relatively flat and peaceful path through sub-alpine meadows and enters a canyon that gradually becomes steeper and deeper as it leads to the unfortunate obscenity of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. (I visited that location this summer for the first time in many year, and I found it to be the saddest place that I can ever recall visiting in the National Park System.)

But to leave that gloom and doom behind, this portion of the Tuolumne is spectacularly beautiful! Here the river begins to flow quickly and sometimes wildly across granite slabs, sometimes pausing to flow serenely in more level sections. As I was photographing other more intimate subjects above the river I happened to look up and see this beautiful late afternoon back-light shining through the trees that climbed up towards these folded granite ridges, with the haze-obscured vertical cliffs beyond.

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

Tree in Granite Bowl, Sunset

September 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree near the base of a granite bowl is illuminated by sunset light, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph in an area alongside the Tuolumne River where large expanses of granite slabs tilt down almost to the river itself. This is a wonderful place for photography: subjects here include everything from the river itself to the granite and the trees and other plants, the light ranges from colorful light reflected from nearby cliffs to sunset and sunrise light to the soft pre-sunrise and post-sunset light.

I had been photographing some larger trees and some trees and plants growing from narrow cracks in the solid rock, but as the sun dropped to near the horizon and the light’s color warmed, I moved over to an area where a line of larger trees marches up the slope between two expanses of granite. From here I spotted this small and stunted tree growing out of nearly solid rock and with a background of curving granite slabs occasionally interrupted by the odd boulder. The photograph was made in just about the very last light of the evening is it slanted across the rocky scene, and the “golden hour” light intensified the subtle colors of the rocks.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: slab

Plants and Fractured Granite

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Tree and Stained Granite

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Trees and Granite Cliffs, Evening Light

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Tree in Granite Bowl, Sunset

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

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