Tag Archives: smoke

Smoke-Shrouded Hills

March 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke envelops hills east of the Sierra Nevada near Mono Lake

I made this photograph on a special morning that didn’t initially seem all that special. The night before I had driven down into Lee Vining Canyon after dark, and I could see the glow of a new wildfire to the southeast. In the morning I left my camp in the canyon and headed east to see what I could see. I found a high overlook and soon saw a giant plume of rising smoke to the south and tendrils of smoke drifting north toward and over Mono Lake.

I spent a few minutes photographing the drifting smoke above the lake, but very soon the smoke became too thick. I had to find a location that was on that boundary between too much and too little smoke — enough to partially obscure the details of the landscape, but not so much as to render it invisible. I moved further north to another high elevation locations and photographed back into the Basin. But this point the lower elevations were largely filled with smoke, but here one tree-covered ridge emerges and rises toward the still blue sky.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Morning, Wildfire Smoke

December 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke layer drift, above Mono Lake at sunrise

The subject of this photograph comes about as close to being insubstantial as possible. When I began photographing before dawn on this September morning, Mono Lake was still mostly visible, though a large cloud of wildfire smoke was gathering to the southeast and beginning to drift toward the lake. First, layers of smoke began to stretch individually across the lake as sunrise approached. As more of them arrived they began to completely obscure the more distant landscape and to mute the colors and details of objects that were even closer. If you look at this photograph for a moment you can begin to see what remains — a bit of a peninsula with some tufa formations along the right margin, and in the lower center and stretching toward the left some soft reflections of morning light on the surface of the lake.

For a moment when I first saw the smoke I was disappointed that it might interfere with my photography, but it only took a moment to realize that these were special and beautiful conditions not likely to occur that often. The smoke and the morning backlight rendered details almost invisible, only seen faintly through gaps in the smoke. The smoke itself, dividing into layers and taking on subtle colors from the morning back-light, filled the scene with nearly abstract shapes. But before long smoke filled in even more, and soon it was too opaque to photograph at all.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Wildfire Smoke, Morning Light

November 30, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light reflects on the surface of Mono Lake, partially obscured by drifting wildfire smoke

The night before I made this photograph I had driven back to my Lee Vining Canyon camp from a backcountry hike in the Tioga Pass area, leaving the park and descending the steep route after dark. As I crossed the upper end of Lee Vining Canyon, where there is a relatively clear view to the east, I saw the pall of smoke from a developing wildfire and the glow from the flames lighting it from below. Given California’s drought, the late point in the dry season, and the number of other fires in this area, I was quite concerned about what might be happening.

I got up well before dawn the next morning and as I headed down canyon toward Mono Lake there was just a bit of smoke in the air. As I came around the final bend before the junction with US 395, however, I could see that there was a very dark cloud to the southeast and that layers of smoke were starting to drift across the surface of Mono Lake in the pre-dawn light. My first though was a bit of disappointment that the smoke was likely to interfere with my photography plans, but this was quickly replaced by the realization that I was starting to see some very special and unusual conditions as the dawn approached. I found a high place and went to work photographing abstract and soft patterns composed of the reflecting surface of Mono Lake, the drifting smoke bands, and the partially obscured distant mountains.

Photographs: France, Photographs: Urban/Street

Along the Seine

October 28, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Most of our time in Paris this past August was spent walking, and there are certainly plenty of great places to walk in this city! But Paris is big enough that sometimes it is useful to get around in other ways: train, bus, subway… and boat. So, after a few days of looking around on foot we decided to catch one of the river tours up and down the Seine through the city. We’ve done this in other cities and discovered that the boats often provide a very different view of things than what we see from the streets.

I quickly figured out that much of my photography from the river would best be done with a longer lens, so I put a telephoto zoom that I had brought along on my little Fujifilm XPro2 camera. Photographic subjects, when seen from a boat, often pass very quickly and there would be little time for lens changes. I photographed almost continuously — architecture, bridges, people along the banks of the river, and more. Here I saw a fellow relaxing against a wall at the top of a stairway leading down to a walkway along the river.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: smoke

Morning, Wildfire Smoke

Along the Seine

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