Tag Archives: storm

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

Aspens, First Autumn Snow

October 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

We made it to the eastern Sierra Nevada last week for the annual pilgrimage to photograph aspen color. We drove over on the day when the first winter-like storm of the season came to the range, and our travel plans changed accordingly. Normally we would cross the Sierra via Tioga Pass through Yosemite National Park. Although the Republican government shutdown closed the park, the trans-Sierra highway 120 remained open… until the night before our trip when it was closed in preparation for the forecast storm. When this pass closes – as it can often do in October, when early season storms drop a few inches of snow on the road – I have to consider options to the north: Sonora, Ebbetts, or Carson Passes. When we started out, Sonora was still open, but I figured that Carson was a better bet, as it is an all-season route. So we headed over Carson in the morning, encountering the first snow flurries well before the pass. From this point on, with the exception of a few lower elevation sections of our drive over Monitor Pass and then down highway 395 to Bishop, we were either in or near light snow.

This has been a slightly different year for aspens – though, to be honest, no two years evolve exactly the same way when it comes to the color transition. The highest trees had mostly lost their leaves, but we saw excellent color in many places all along the route. This color transition marks, for me, the reality that the warm season is over and California’s rainy, snowy, and colder season is coming. Being among the aspens during one of the first early season snow storms amplifies that effect, and we remarked on how sudden the transition was. Only a few days earlier it had been in the low 90 degree range in parts of Central California… and here we were in snow. I photographed the scene in this photograph as we reached the top of Conway Summit, the high point on highway 395 just north of the town of Lee Vining. Here one of the largest and most accessible aspen groves can provide an astonishing amount and variety of color for a few days each year. However, on this day the colors were distinctly muted by the falling snow.

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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

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Mono Lake Sky

August 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon thunderstorms develop over the eastern Sierra Nevada and Mono Lake

I think that many people are initially drawn to Mono Lake by the famous and often photographed tufa tower formations, and I have certainly sought out and photographed that subject quite a few times. But the more I go there the less I’m interested primarily in the tufas, and the more I find myself drawn to and thinking about other things. These include the immense space and deep quite surrounding the lake, broken by the cries of birds, especially when you visit at the quietest time around dawn. I also am drawn to the sky above this lake – which is often, frankly, rather barren, but when filled with the right kind of clouds can almost be the subject itself.

But only almost, so in this photograph I decided to include a thin strip of the reflecting water of the lake along with the darker formation of Black Point and the hills rising beyond in order to anchor that sky to something solid. This was one of those afternoons when thunder storms were trying to develop, but couldn’t quite build sufficiently before sundown. But this still left some very spectacular clouds, especially where updrafts pushed their tops high into the light. I suppose that there are several reasons that I chose to make this a black and white photograph, but one very practical reason was that the lower reaches of the atmosphere were a bit brown from a nearby wildfire, and I could better adapt to that in monochrome.

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

Granite Towers, Storm Clouds

August 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Storm clouds begin to clear about granite towers and spires, Yosemite Valley, California

These towers stand close to Sentinel Rocks in Yosemite Valley. The day had started out very cloudy, with light rain on the Valley floor and snow flurries around the rim of the Valley. As the day wore on the rain mostly stopped and there were breaks in the clouds, although the atmosphere stayed a bit on the murky side overall. That “murkiness” was not very conducive to a color photograph so I felt that this was more likely to end up in monochrome, as indeed it did. Because the sun is slightly behind the large towers and because the atmosphere was not completely clear, the towers took on a sort of ominous quality.

On a winter day when clouds ring the Valley I could easily spend hours with a long lens pointed up toward the rim, isolating little vignettes of clouds and trees and rock. For a place whose landscape seems to be so familiar, this provides an ephemeral alternate landscape that forms and disappears in moments. When I’m in the Valley, give me clouds!

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

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

June 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Huge winter surf breaks over rocky coastal islands along California’ Big Sur Coastline.

In mid-January waves of stupendous size came ashore along the California coastline, as they do at times every winter. The surf was caused by storms, but not storms that were at all visible here in California, where this was an unusually warm and sunny weekend, with clear skies and temperatures (in January!) in the low seventy degree range. As I understand it, the source of the large waves was a big Pacific storm far to the north, in the region of the Aleutian Islands, which was sending huge swells thousands of miles toward our coastline.

The news reports were making a big deal of so-called “sneaker waves” – huge waves that seemingly appear unexpectedly and sometimes wash over areas that might seem safe. Sometimes the reports overdo this sort of thing, but the warnings are justified, and this was especially the case during this occurrence. We were even surprised a bit ourselves. When we finally made it to this area along the Big Sur coast that is open to the ocean, we expected to see huge surf, but when we pulled over and looked it didn’t seem like anything all that extraordinary was happening. Yes, there were waves, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. However, as we grabbed gear and tripods and walked to an overlook on a bluff above the water a series of truly huge waves began to come ashore. It turns out that this pattern alternates periods of smaller waves with periodic intervals of much larger waves, and we certainly saw abundant evidence as gigantic waves completely overwhelmed these rocky offshore islands before continuing on to hit the shoreline and wash far up the beaches.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: storm

Aspens, First Autumn Snow

Mono Lake Sky

Granite Towers, Storm Clouds

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

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