Tag Archives: spring

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

Granite, Falling Water

May 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A spring creek cascades across dark fractured granite, Yosemite National Park

Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road (Highway 120), which passes through the park and across the Sierra crest at Tioga Pass, opened earlier than usual this year. It was not the earliest recorded opening, but the very small snow pack of the winter season meant that in early May it looked much more like a typical June. There was some snow left on the ground, but rather than being the deep and compacted remains of months of winter snow it was mostly what was left from a single spring storm a few days earlier.

In a more typical year, a drive over this route on the opening weekend provides an experience that is, to my way of thinking, mostly about water. Not only do we get to see vast remaining snow banks holding water that will irrigate the Sierra for months to come, but the spring melt brings wild, watery scenes nearly everywhere. Waterfalls and creeks appear in places where there is almost no evidence of their existence weeks or months later. Creeks spill across the highway flood sections of it. Larger creeks and rivers overflow their banks and turn meadows into lakes. But not this year. The photograph features a small section of a larger cascade which bounces down a steep and rugged section of granite boulders. Beautiful as it is, it should look like this in late June rather than early May.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

May 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring haze, morning light, and rugged mountains meeting the Pacific Ocean, Big Sur coast

This spot marked the furthest south that I travelled on my brief photographic foray along the Big Sur coast earlier this week. Here, as in a number of other spots along this section of the Pacific Coast Highway, the route rises high above the ocean to pass through a section of very steep cliffs where the coastal mountains and the ocean meet abruptly. From this overlook the spines of a few nearby ridges were just to my south, and beyond the shoreline disappeared into the glowing atmospheric haze to the south.

One of the advantages of modern digital cameras is that they permit more flexibility and allow us to make aesthetic choices about our photographs more freely. Although I mostly “see” in color, sometimes a subject works better in black and white. Sometimes I don’t even realize this at the time of the exposure. Which is OK, since digital allows us to sometimes think less of “making the photograph” in the field and perhaps more about “bringing the image back” for full realization in the post-processing stage. In some cases, it allows us to focus more on pure capture and to put off some of the decisions we might have had to make at that point until later. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing! However, this is an example of a photograph that I knew was going to be black and white as soon as I saw the scene. Looking south along this coast on a day like this one, the air is filled with a haze made luminous by backlight. Colors are often so muted that they might as well be black and white, and the haze itself can take on a strong blue cast. Here I didn’t want that blue haze effect, but I did want the glow and the strong shapes of the ridges dropping into the sea.

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

Spring Oaks, Sierra Foothills

May 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring oak trees and meadows, Sierra Nevada foothills

In this drought year Tioga Pass, the trans-Sierra route through Yosemite National Park, opened earlier than usual. For me, the opening of this pass marks the end of the winter season and the beginning of the summer, with its easier access to the high country. Virtually every year I mark this event by visiting the Yosemite high country on the opening day or as close to it as possible. This year’s early May opening fell on a busy weekend, so I couldn’t be there on the actual opening day, but two days later I was able to squeeze in a one-day up-and-back trip from the San Francisco Bay Area.

I was up way before dawn and on the road before 4:00 AM. During the winter months such a start time would get me into the Sierra for dawn photography, but with the longer days at this time of year the sun rose when I was still in the foothills. While many might regard the foothill terrain as something to pass through on the way to the more interesting goal, I have come to love the soft, curving foothills, with their covering of grasses (green at this time of year, but brown to golden most of the time) and oak trees, either standing individually or as part of large oak forests. When I came to this spot, where I have stopped to photograph before, I found the meadows in that transitional state between the remaining greens of this year’s (meager) spring moisture and browns of California’s summer.

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

Spring Flooding, Tuolumne Meadows

May 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Tuolumne River overflows its banks on a spring evening, Tuolumne Meadows

This is another, slightly different view of a scene that I shared recently, photographed at Tuolumne Meadows on the weekend when Tioga Pass Road over the Sierra crest opened for the 2014 season. As is my habit, I broke free and made it up there to celebrate the beginning of a new high country season. It was a quick trip—a 21 hour 550 mile drive that took me across the range to the Mono Lake area and some nearby sights on the “east side.” Later in the day I reversed course and headed back up to Tioga Pass and began my homeward trip, stopping to spend a good part of the evening in Tuolumne Meadows, where strong wind blew as the golden hour light began to develop.

This scene is full of things that I know well. I have visited the general area of Tuolumne Meadows since I was a child and my father took me and one of my brothers up there on the first camping trip that I can remember. Every spring (or early summer in wet years) when I return I look for this area of the meadow where the Tuolumne River overflows its banks and produces a temporary lake, even in a very dry year like this one. On a number of occasions I have hiked on a trail that crosses from right to left just below the bright granite peak in the upper left, heading for a pass below Ragged Peak and then on to Young Lakes, which lie just beyond that highest ridge. (Just below and to the left of the granite peak lies a beautiful area of subalpine meadow with scattered rocks and extensive fields of lupine.) On this evening there were few people in the meadow, as the campground was not yet open and not many people were still up here so late in the day, so I was able to wait quietly for the clouds and the light to line up just right.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: spring

Granite, Falling Water

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

Spring Oaks, Sierra Foothills

Spring Flooding, Tuolumne Meadows

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