Tag Archives: sunset

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

Dome, Last Light

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Dome, Last Light
The last light of the day glows on a granite dome in the Yosemite backcountry wilderness.

Dome, Last Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last light of the day glows on a granite dome in the Yosemite backcountry wilderness.

If your experience with the natural world comes largely from watching media about the experiences of those who travel there… it is possible that your perception is skewed in ways that do not quite correspond to reality. Based on what you’ll sometimes see, you could end up thinking that the wilderness is a wild, thrill-a-minute place full of dangerous animals, daring hikes along edges of cliffs and more — all with exciting, bigger-than-life narration and dramatic musical accompaniment. I admit to occasionally falling (happily) for such illusions, but the reality is a lot different. Most of the time little happens. It is quiet. You are alone with your thoughts. There is time and space to just ponder.

The end of a backcountry day is often such a time, and when it comes — The end of a backcountry day is often such a time, and when it comes — as this scene does — from the end of a backcountry season, it can be even quieter and meditative. As a photographer, the last few hours of the day are often busy times as we “work the light” before it is gone. But inevitably, the light eventually fades, and I’m often left standing quietly and just… looking.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Black Point and Negit Island

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Black Point and Negit Island
Tufa formations, Black Point, Negit Island, and distant hills in sunset light at Mono Lake.

Black Point and Negit Island. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tufa formations, Black Point, Negit Island, and distant hills in sunset light at Mono Lake.

Yes, this is yet one more — but probably the last — of the photographs of this lovely autumn evening at Mono Lake a few years ago. Most of the others feature the rising full moon, but I made this one a few minutes before that event, while the last of the day’s sun was still streaming over the Sierra crest and striking the tops of the mountains to the east of Mono Basin.

Besides being a photograph of a beautiful time of day at the lake, the scene includes a number of important little elements that might not be immediately obvious. In the foreground we see a few of the ubiquitous tufa formations that dot the border of the lake, quite a few of which were revealed when Los Angeles’ thirst for Sierra Nevada dropped the lake level. This also reveals sections of the curving lake shore that would have been underwater some decades ago. At the far left is the dark bulk of Black Point, and intriguing formation that few get to actually visit. Just of Black Point’s shoulder is Negit Island, one of two volcanic islands in the lake. to its right you can barely see the low north side of larger Paoho island. And those far mountains where a bit of sun still shines are a very long ways away, and it a location that is pretty close to inaccessible.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Autumn Moon Rising, Mono Lake

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Autumn Moon Rising, Mono Lake
A full autumn moon rises above Mono Lake at dusk.

Autumn Moon Rising, Mono Lake. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A full autumn moon rises above Mono Lake at dusk.

There are still a few more photographs in this series of autumn evening images from Mono Lake that I made a few years ago. These come from that pandemic photographic genre that we might call “photographs that would have been lost forever if forced isolation had not given me a great reason to look through my old files.” (Maybe you have a shorter title?) I know I’m not the only one dong this. Travel has, of course, been complicated for a year and a half. I’ve been out, and I’ve even been to Mono Lake during this interval, but the opportunities seem greatly diminished. But there are tens of thousands of raw files in my archives, and it has been productive to spend time going back through them and discovering things I had left behind. (How that happens would be a great subject for a long post sometime.)

On this autumn evening I timed by arrival at Mono Lake for right around sunset. I knew that the full moon would rise over those distant mountains east of Mono Basin, and I expected that the moon world rise while there was still some light in the sky. This is ideal in many ways, since the remaining ambient light is often colorful, it illuminates landscape details, and it reduces the contrast between the bright moon and the darker scene. In several of the photographs —working very quickly! — I used a much longer focal length to enlarge the moon. But for this one I backed off and included much more of the surrounding landscape and the lake.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Mono Lake Moonrise

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Mono Lake Moonrise
Early autumn full moon rising over Mono Lake, California.

Mono Lake Moonrise. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early autumn full moon rising over Mono Lake, California.

This is a photograph of that magical moment when an early-autumn full moon rises above the mountains to the east of Mono Lake while there is still a bit of sunset or early twilight light in the sky. I’ve experienced this here quite a few times, and I often time my arrival at this point for this hour when it is full moon time. On this evening it all worked out perfectly: intense color in the sky as the moon appeared, plus sky color reflected on the surface of the lake, interspersed with blue areas where surface turbulence broke up the reflection.

Photographing a full moon is a bit trickier than it might appear at first glance, especially if you want to include the landscape in the scene, too. Once it is dark or close to it, the difference between the light on the landscape and light of the moon is huge — the moon is essentially a daylight exposure, while that landscape is much darker. Even with a camera that had enough dynamic range to capture both of those extremes, you would either end up with a well-exposed moon and a nearly invisible landscape or a nicely exposed landscape and featureless white disk of a moon. One approach is to time the photograph so that the moon in in the sky before it is fully dark. Ideally, this means photographing the moon a bit before it is truly “full” — or photographing at a time of year when there is still light on the landscape when a truly full moon rises.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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