Tag Archives: spring

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Four Tule Elk, Point Reyes

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Four Tule Elk, Point Reyes
Four Tule Elk, Point Reyes

Four Tule Elk, Point Reyes. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. May 30, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Four tule elk in the meadows at Point Reyes National Seashore.

When the day started I had no idea that I might be photographing wildlife today, much less tule elk! In fact, today was meant to be primarily a photography day. We decided to spend the day on a coastal drive, starting with breakfast in Santa Cruz and then heading north to… wherever we ended up. We had a vague idea that it might be interesting to end up at Point Reyes Station perhaps, where there was an open art studio event going on.

By mid-afternoon, that is indeed where we ended up. We stopped in town to get coffee and a snack and wander about just a bit. With no specific plan in mind we sort of decided to head on out to Point Reyes – the actual “point,” not just the general park. On the way back we took a detour down to Drakes Bay for a quick stop. As we drive back up from there to the top of the hill near the main road we saw some strange shapes in the distance behind a fence. The looked like antlers, but that didn’t seem right – this particular area is dairy country and the elk that I had heard about were in a different area of the park. But as we reached the top of the hill it became completely obvious that a small herd of tule elk were grazing right on the other side of the fence. We pulled over and I grabbed my long lens. The elk were kind enough to occasionally look up from the business of grazing and pose dramatically in the low late-afternoon light from the west.

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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

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

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Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek
Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek. Yosemite National Park, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Runoff from spring snow melt rushes over boulders of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.

I recently posted the black and white version of this photograph of Cascade Creek in full spring flow. I am still undecided about which I prefer. I haven’t printed either as of the date of this posting, and the results of that further work may help me decide.

The color version of this photograph posed a series of post-processing questions and problems that others who have worked with a scene like this one can probably imagine. The creek descends through a narrow, rocky gorge at this point and I photographed it early in the morning before any direct sunlight was able to reach the water. Benefits of shooting at this time included the softer light, which tends to both throw some light into the shadows and to soften the brightest highlights. This also permits a longer exposure which allows the water to blur a bit and express the wild motion of the creek. However, since the primary source of light was the open sky, the camera “sees” a very blue scene. (Our visual system compensates for this, so it doesn’t look as blue as it really is when you are on the scene.)

There are several ways to deal with the color balance issues that this situation creates. You could just “go with the blue,” and I’ve seen photographs done that way. I’ve even seen some in which the photograph amped up the saturation and ended up with something very blue. In general, that’s not my thing! I’m most often looking for something that seems “believable” – it may not be objectively accurate, but I intend it to be “subjectively accurate.” With this in mind, my first instinct was simply to warm the color balance in order to move away from the blue cast and toward a warmer one.

My immediate impression was that this was an improvement, and I worked with this interpretation for several days – but something about it didn’t sit quite right with me. (This is perhaps one reason that I also worked with the black and white rendition in the meantime.) Eventually I did some comparisons between the “warmed up” version and the original… and neither seemed like what I was after. The overly blue original looked garish but the overly warm version seemed artificial. I tried some other approaches and finally discovered that because the blue was so intense that I could simply desaturate it – more than you might think – and keep the “colder” coloration without letting it overwhelm the image.

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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.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM at 126mm (at B&H)
ISO 100, f/16, 1/8 second

 

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

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

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Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek
Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek

Boulders and Spring Torrent, Cascade Creek. Yosemite National Park, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Runoff from spring snow melt rushes over boulders of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.

This is a subject that I return to several times each year – a particular section of creek that can be viewed from overhead and which can vary from nearly dry to a wild torrent depending upon the time of year and the character of each new year. During the past year I was inspired by Charles Cramer’s stunning photograph of this subject to look at it more closely and from some different perspectives. (A small bit of “Charlie’s scene” appears in this photograph. I wonder if you can find it? :-)

In some ways, the view of this scene is limited in that you can only see it from a particular range of positions – unless you have the skill of levitation! In another way it is hardly limiting at all since the larger view contains many possible smaller views of rocks and plants and water and light. I still have in mind a horizontal composition in this general area, but so far it hasn’t quite worked. Guess I’ll have to keep trying.

I made this photograph in the morning before any direct light had worked its way around the mountains and down into the stream bed. Beyond the stream, which drops precipitously into the Merced River far below, there was open sky and that is the light that reflects on some of the wet rocks. By playing around to find an appropriate combination of ISO values, aperture, and shutter speed, I tried to get the water to hold some detail but to also be blurred enough to reflect its wild motion as it tumbles down this rocky canyon.

As is sometimes the case, I still cannot decide for sure between this monochrome version and a color version that will appear here before long.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
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

Dogwood Blossoms, Forest

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Dogwood Blossoms, Forest
Dogwood Blossoms, Forest

Dogwood Blossoms, Forest. Yosemite Valley, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dogwood tree blooms in the forest of Yosemite Valley.

I have a feeling that I need to try a largish print of this one – there is so much detail in the scene that it is almost hard to make sense out of it in a small jpg. In the late afternoon I had wandered along the north edge of the Valley until I reached a point a bit east of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Having finished in this area, I headed around the hotel grounds and toward the Merced River and the former campground areas that were closed after the epic floods of a decade or so ago. This area is in some spots largely overgrown by thick, low plants and in some places I know that there are some good specimens of dogwood.

Although it was early in this year’s dogwood bloom cycle, I found a couple of very good trees in this area, and these two were almost completely in bloom. The forest here is quite dark and thick, and especially during the early evening time when I arrived this made the density of the vegetation seem even more impressive. The idea here was to fill the frame with flower-laden branches with the strong vertical lines of the forest trees behind, but also with detail everywhere in the frame.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
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.