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

Home Away From Home

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Home Away From Home
My camp for a week in the Yosemite backcountry, September 2015

Home Away From Home. Yosemite National Park, California. September 11, 2015 © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

My camp for a week in the Yosemite backcountry, September 2015

For the past few years I have escaped to the mountains (or desert, in one case) each fall or late summer for uninterrupted photography. Perhaps a half-dozen years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to join up with the five photographers whose work appears in the book “First Light: Five Photographers Explore Yosemite’s Wilderness.” The first year I more or less ran into the group (Charles Cramer, Scot Miller, Mike Osborne, Keith Walklet, Karl Kroeber) — they were on a pack-train supported weeklong-plus trip, and had backpacked in to the same area where I ran into them briefly. The next year I “crashed” their lengthy back-country trip for a few days; the following year I was still a backpacker (they used pack animals) but I joined them for the better part of a week. Since that time I’ve joined all or part of the group for a week or more each fall. (I’m grateful to all of them for welcoming me to join them.)

This year a smaller group of us spent a bit more than a week camped at a single Yosemite backcountry location. For someone with years of backpacking experience, typically moving from place to place each day, staying in one spot for so long has been a revelation. At first I wondered how in the world there will be enough to keep me busy for a week or more. Then half way through the trip I typically realize that I have just enough time to photograph the things I decide are important to work on, only to discover on the final day or two that I could probably actually use another half week or more! The photograph shows my backcountry home for a week this past September, at the end of a granite slab that extended almost all the way to the lake that was our home base.

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 and Amazon.
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Ansel’s Moon

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Edie Howe has posted a delightful little slide show made at this week’s Yosemite Valley event, sponsored by the Ansel Adams Gallery, that commemorated the making of the famous Ansel Adams photograph of Half Dome and the rising moon. The idea was that position of the moon and timing relative to daylight would duplicate those at the time of Adams’ original exposure. I enjoyed Edie’s sequence (nice final photograph, Edie!) and looking at some of the (pardon the awful pun) luminaries of Yosemite photography as they held forth in Ahwahnee Meadow. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there!

Perhaps ironically, the moon was hidden behind what appears to be a bit of a snow squall above Half Dome, though it appeared to be clear both before and perhaps after the historic moment! In a way I think that this might have been the most appropriate thing that could have happened. While I don’t think that trying to re-make Ansel Adam’s photograph has any more validity than trying to re-write a Mozart symphony, the event seemed like a great opportunity to: gather together on a beautiful evening in this wonderful meadow, contemplate the evening with the additional context of thoughts about Adams and his photography, meet a number of people influenced by Adams’ legacy, and focus on Adams’ photograph rather than trying to create one’s own version – since the imitative exercise turned out to be impossible!

I wish I had been there.