Tag Archives: subalpine

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sierra Meadow, Evening Light

July 18, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Cathedral Range and the Dana Fork fork of the Tuolumne River

One of the great pleasures of the Sierra — and other places, for that matter — is “aimless wandering,” just heading out into a landscape with no specific goal in mind, but simply to move slowly and quietly and find what there is to see. This was an evening for such things, so I went to a familiar place a few hours before the end of the day and just walked off slowly into the landscape, meandering along the boundary between meadow and forest, stopping frequently to observe. Truth be told, I probably spent more time standing still than walking.

Perhaps 45 minutes before sunset I realized that some unusual “sky action” was about to take place above my location, and my meandering took on a clearer since of direction. I began to work my way back toward my starting point, a location from which I envisioned photographs of the sky and foreground landscape. But even this more purposeful walking was slow, and along the way I stopped to photograph this bend in the river, with a distant granite ridge above the meadow and forest.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Shoreline, Forest, Morning

December 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light and forested shoreline reflected on the surface of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

It is way past time to share this photograph — it has been sitting here since I made it back in July! The location is a familiar one to those who visit the Yosemite high country and drive across Tioga Pass Road, but sometimes I do stop at those iconic locations and make a photograph, especially in a quiet and uncrowded morning like this one.

Lakes like this one are among the places that often make me wonder if visitors have any idea what they are missing. So many people, for practical reasons or because they don’t know better, come to such places in the middle of the day or in the afternoon. While they are certainly beautiful at any time, these locations are almost (but not quite always!) at their most beautiful at the very beginning and very end of the day. Lakes like this one are often completely still at dawn, sometimes with a bit of fog rising from their surface, and the surroundings are usually quiet and uncrowded. Even in a spot like this one — where I can assure you there were crowds later in the day — I can have the place virtually to myself.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Trees, Shoreline

October 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful autumn aspen trees along the rocky shoreline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

The Sierra Nevada autumn color season seemed to start earlier than usual this year. The question of when it would start has been on the minds of many of us who chase the aspen and other color each fall, especially given the effects of California’s fourth year of drought. We wondered (and still wonder) how many trees would die, how early the color would arrive, how good it would be, and much more. The picture isn’t yet fully clear, but I think that I can perhaps make three generalizations. First, the color did arrive early — I made this photograph during the last week of September, and such color typically arrives in this location perhaps a full week later. Second, some trees have clearly been stressed by the drought — in places trees that would usually be developing colorful leaves have instead simply dropped their leaves early. Third, in places where the water situation isn’t quite as dire there are still a lot of very green trees, and they will possibly prolong the color season well into October.

When I visited this spot I already had a long familiarity with this colorful group of trees growing along the shoreline of this subalpine lake. Ironically, it was in this drought year, when I arrived at an atypically early point in the season, that I found what may be the best colors I’ve seen on them. In the Sierra the predominant autumn aspen leaf color is a sort of golden-yellow. However, there are other colors ranging from orange through read and even to some deep almost red-brown colors. In some ways, those are the “prize” colors that we look for. And this little strip of trees has those colors in abundance!

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

Subalpine Lake, Dusk

September 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk comes to a Sierra Nevada subalpine lake on a rainy evening

Near the middle of September three of us spent a week camped at one Yosemite back-country lake, photographing the lake and its surroundings every day in a range of conditions. At times we dealt with this summer’s extremes of wildfire smoke, which was occasionally so thick that it almost seemed like fog and it made breathing difficult. But each day, even on the smokiest days, the wind picked up and it cleared out enough to make photographs — some days the early morning was clear and the smoke drifted in later, while on other days we started out with murky conditions and then watched them clear.

A bit to our surprise, on the last few days a weather front came through and we had much more “interesting” weather — rain, wind, hail, graupel, and clouds swirling around the nearby peaks. On this evening the clouds were gathering — it would rain later that night — and patterns of lighter and darker clouds filled the sky above our lake. Late in the evening, as the light was beginning to fail, I walked a short distance from my tent, set up along the shoreline, and mad some photographs of this mysterious scene in the fading light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: subalpine

Sierra Meadow, Evening Light

Shoreline, Forest, Morning

Aspen Trees, Shoreline

Subalpine Lake, Dusk

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