Arriving at this spot involved one of the driving adventures that characterized much of our time in northwest Scotland. We followed a main road northward from Skye, and here we diverged to the west toward the coast. As we topped a rise we looked back and saw this spectacular scene — spots of sunlight on nearby hills, light rain falling between us and three distant tall peaks, and a dramatic, cloud-filled sky.
Continue reading Three Peaks, Rain Clouds
This photograph has been in the queue for months as I worked on other subjects, and before that it languished in my raw file archive for a couple of years. I rediscovered it during a review of past season’s fall color photographs last year. There is a bit of fall color in the leaves of these trees, but it may be subtle.
After photographing in Yosemite Valley for decades, I am less inclined to re-photograph the big icons. I’ll do so in exceptional conditions, but I’m more interested in poking around odd corners of the valley and looking for new perspectives. This location is a bit tricky — several years ago it was identified as being an area prone to rockfall — but I’m attracted to several features of this view. The foreground trees don’t quite block the view, and beyond them a large meadow allows plentiful light. Across the valley are steep cliffs, in including some with cascades and small waterfalls.
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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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A band of photographers and friends has met in a semi-wild place every New Year’s Day for about a decade. We get join welcome tothe new year, share stories, and photograph birds and the landscape. Until this year we had a streak of good weather New Year’s Days, but we were due for bad weather — and we got it! It wasn’t exactly horrible, but it was rather wet and gray… except for a few moments when the clouds parted enough to allow some light.
These three bare trees are old friends of mine. I’ve visited and photographed them for years. This time I was intrigued by the light on more distant trees, the ominous skies, and the newly green pasture. That winter green is a characteristic of much of California. it must almost seem to those from other places that our seasons are backwards — brown and dry in the summer and lush and green in the middle of winter.
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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
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.
From the time I first visited Tuolumne Meadows (decades ago, as a child) I remember hearing that the meadows were being gradually overtaken by the forests. (I later learned that the story is not quite that simple.) This stuck with me, and I’ve always been intrigued by the boundaries between meadow and forest. This photograph shows three age groupings of pines next to this meadow — the three big and old trees left of center, a dense stand of younger tall trees at the right, and a thick line of “baby trees” extending from the left edge beyond the three big trees.
This was a special morning at Tuolumne. It was the first day of July, in a year when the campground would not open for another month. Park entrance restrictions further limited the number of visitors. I camped just outside the park and was able to enter before dawn. I had the landscape almost entirely to myself as the sun rose and light fog cleared from the meadow.
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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
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.