Tag Archives: trail

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Crossing Kaweah Gap

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Crossing Kaweah Gap
The High Sierra Trail crosses alpine terrain near Kaweah Gap

Crossing Kaweah Gap. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The High Sierra Trail crosses alpine terrain near Kaweah Gap

I have been reviewing my older archives of raw files recently, partly because it simply is important to do so from time to time, and partly because I’m between locations and looking for additional images to work on. Any time I go back through the older files I find things that are interesting, and occasionally I even find some excellent photographs that I overlooked the first time around.

This photograph comes from 2008. To me it seems more interesting as a record of a particular place and a particular event than on a purely photographic basis. (I could have wished for a more interesting sky!) This was my second crossing of the High Sierra Trail, which we followed from the west side of Sequoia National Park, across the entire range, to the summit of Mount Whitney, and then down to Whitney Portal. On this trip I traveled with a group of long-time backcountry friends… unlike the first time I did this trip perhaps 25 years earlier, when I did it with my wife. I made this photograph from the top of Kaweah Gap, the pass through the Great Western Divide before dropping into Big Arroyo. The photograph looks back to the west, across the trail we had ascended to reach this point.

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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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwood Forest Trail

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A quiet trail though old-growth redwood groves.
A quiet trail though old-growth redwood groves.

Redwood Forest Trail. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A quiet trail though old-growth redwood groves.

One of my loose goals on this trip to the Redwood National and State Parks was to scout a bit. This was such a new area to me that I did not have illusions about finding the very best subjects right away, and I regard a first visit like this one as being the start of a longer photographic relationship with the place. In other words, I wanted to photographer then and there, but I also wanted to start to know the place, with an eye to future return visits.

With that in mind I visited four of the parks that comprise the larger state and national park collective. Time will tell if my initial impressions are correct, but each park seems to have a different and somewhat individual character. My last stop in the area, on the morning when I began my drive to a locations further south, was the Prairie Creek State Park. The great old-growth redwood trees are impressive wherever you find them, but it seemed to me that here they were even more so. After photographing some alder trees along a roadway, I moved on and selected a trail to hike, making the choice based more on hunch than anything else. I wandered slowly up a canyon filled with the giant trees as broken clouds moved changing light across the scene.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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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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

Meadow, Forest, Evening Light

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Meadow, Forest, Evening Light
Soft evening light and haze illuminate a meadow clearing with silhouetted trees

Meadow, Forest, Evening Light. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft evening light and haze illuminate a meadow clearing with silhouetted trees

It was late on a clear winter day, and I found myself in Yosemite Valley, in an area of trees and meadows. My first objective was group of riverside trees that were catching the early evening light coming up the Valley from the west. Soon the cliffs along the north side of the Valley cast shadows across these trees, so I moved on, following the shadow-sun line to the southwest as I crossed meadows.

Ahead a row of trees cut across the meadow along the route of a trail. A management fire was burned a bit to the west — incinerating trees that died in the drought of the past few years — and the smoke drifted, producing a gentle haze in the evening light. I found a break in the trees, with a meadow and back-lit trees on the far side, and above more trees fading into the haze toward faint cliff silhouettes. I made a quick series of exposures, and then then light was gone.

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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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

Tree And Boulder

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Tree And Boulder
A curving tree and a large boulder along a Yosemite Valley trail

Tree And Boulder. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A curving tree and a large boulder along a Yosemite Valley trail

One of the pluses about having a full week in Yosemite (during my recent Yosemite Renaissance artist residency was that I had more time to slowly explore places I might have otherwise missed during a visit with a more compressed timeline. On a short visit it is easy to feel the pressure to make the very best use of limited time and head straight for (what one hopes will be!) “sure bets.” With more time available that pressure is gone, and there is more time to slow down and give in to the rhythms of the place. On this afternoon I took a slow, relaxed walk along a familiar but less-used trail along the base of granite cliffs. On this winter day I hardly saw anyone else there.

A few other things come to mind as I look at this photograph. One surprise is how much this relatively dry and rock place suggests an almost jungle-like mood! I can assure you that it is not such a place, but right here the terrain and forest is a bit thick and complex. Secondly, it is probably obvious that relationships between shapes play a big role in this photograph. The boulder by itself might not be that remarkable, especially in a landscape littered with such boulders. But located beneath the curving tree, whose form echoes that of the boulder, it becomes more of a focal point.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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