Tag Archives: travel

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trillium Plants, Redwood Forest

November 3, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trillium plants beneath the redwood forest canopy at Muir Woods National Monument.

This is another of the previously overlooked photographs from a few years back, this time from Muir Woods National Monument in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I visit there frequently, and on this occasion I arrived just after the bloom of the trillium flowers had finished, but when the plants were still growing strong.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Forest in Afternoon Light

November 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A dense forest backlit by afternoon light along the Northern California coast.

If you follow my blog, you know that I frequently photograph all around the Sierra, in the deserts east and south of the range, in coastal California in the San Francisco Bay Area and south, and even in the Central Valley. I’m almost a bit embarrassed, however, to admit to barely having scratched the surface of the photographic opportunities of “real” northern California, along the coast or inland. While I frequently shoot north of San Francisco, most of this work has been done no farther north than about Point Reyes.

This past weekend my wife and I managed a quick getaway that took us up to and slightly beyond Mendocino, where we spent a couple of nights. This wasn’t meant to be a photographic excursion, but I have a very understanding wife! She did not object when I stopped from time to time on our drive to get out the camera gear and make a few photographs. Truth be told, she made a few herself! I tried to keep the photography under control – after all, this trip was more about relaxing, seeing the sights, enjoying some good food, and so forth – but I did stop a few times make some photographs. And I also realized that I really need to head back up into this area and begin to seriously explore this region that is right at my virtual doorstep, and which is in many ways quite different from the “other Californias” that I’ve become familiar with.

This photograph was made in an extensive deciduous forest in a more or less random spot along the road, north of Fort Bragg and in an area where highway 1 takes an inland jog.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Dense Aspen Grove, Bishop Creek

October 31, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Soft light filters through the canopy of a dense aspen grove near Bishop Creek, California.

I think that these dense aspen forest scenes ended up being something of a theme for me this fall. In this one I tried to find as dense an example of aspen forest as I could locate and then to make a photograph that may perhaps evoke the combination of diffused light coming down through the depleted canopy of yellow leaves and the very tightly packed trees. The trees in this grove are relatively small and closely packed – so close, in fact, that in places it is very hard to move among them. I used an ultra-wide lens to try to both bring as much of this detail into the frame and to let me work very close to the nearest trees. The closest tree is probably no more than about a foot from the camera.

Working in such close quarters, very small changes in camera position end up having large effects on the composition. In the end I found myself repositioning the camera and tripod by fractions of an inch from side to side. Although it isn’t easy to see in this small jpg version, the complex detail of branches and leaves eventually recedes into the distance near the far edge of the grove and the grove becomes a bit lighter along that farthest fringe.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest, Dawn

October 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Dawn light falls on the snow-dusted summit of Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest above Bishop, California.

On this morning I paused along highway 168 on my way to photograph fall aspen color in the Bishop Creek Canyon area to photograph the first light on the Buttermilk Range and along the section of the Sierra crest near Mt. Humphreys and Center Peak. My main reason for stopping here was to photograph the Buttermilks, the rocky hills along the giant “fan” rising from Bishop toward the base of the escarpment of the eastern Sierra. The plan was to find a good vantage point, put a long lens on the camera, and then pick out various features of the range as the edge of the first light hit them.

With that in mind, I was set up here before dawn and standing around in the cold morning air waiting for the light to arrive. Obviously, before the dawn light can get down to the elevation of the Buttermilks it must first hit the peaks of the crest, and who can resist that kind of light? The very first light that just touched the tip of Mount Humphreys, near the right side of the frame, was almost too intense in comparison to the shadowed lower slopes, so I continued to wait until the light, still very saturated with color, illuminated the full upper faces of the crest and began to light up the lower peaks to the east.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

Trillium Plants, Redwood Forest

Forest in Afternoon Light

Dense Aspen Grove, Bishop Creek

Mount Humphreys and the Sierra Crest, Dawn

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