Tag Archives: tree

Tree With Two Hawks, Fog

Morning tule fog clears beyond a tree with a pair of hawks

Tree With Two Hawks, Fog. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning tule fog clears beyond a tree with a pair of hawks

I was in this location to photograph something quite different from what is seen here, but tule fog interfered with that subject to some extent. So I found myself wandering a bit more afield and looking for other subjects. Eventually the fog began to thin and drift away.

This solitary tree appeared against the background of a long grove of (mostly) cottonwood trees, and the thinning fog began to allow light from the morning sky into the scene. Initially I simply saw the tree itself as the subject, but as I composed the photograph I realized that a pair of hawks for perched side-by-side on one of the limbs.


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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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Tree, Lake, Reflected Mountains

Tree, Lake, Reflected Mountains
A solitary tree, subalpine meadows, lake, and reflection of Sierra Nevada peaks

Tree, Lake, Reflected Mountains. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary tree, subalpine meadows, lake, and reflection of Sierra Nevada peaks

For this photograph I again travel back almost a full year, to a late summer photographic adventure into the High Sierra with a group of friends. We had much of our bulky and heavy equipment packed into this remote spot, though we carried our photographic equipment in on our backs. We remained here for about a week, with lots of time to explore and photograph the surrounding landscape.

The closest feature of interest was the meadow holding this subalpine lake. (We camped behind my camera position and on a rise that kept us out of the meadow. ) Early and late in the day the light around this lake could be beautiful, and I made this photograph in the morning while the water was still and the light slanted in from the east and left dramatic shadows on the landscape.


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.

Spring Trees

Spring Trees
A rather well-known grove of Yosemite Valley trees, with new spring foliage and photographed from the “wrong” side

Spring Trees. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A rather well-known grove of Yosemite Valley trees, with new spring foliage and photographed from the “wrong” side

Near the end of this spring’s Yosemite Renaissance artist-in-residency in The Valley the early signs of spring were appearing — grass was turning green, rivers and waterfalls were flowing, temperatures were rising, and leaves were appearing on the deciduous trees. I photographed this well-known little grove just a few days after the first spring leaves emerged, when they still had that transitory yellow-green color of early spring.

Almost anyone familiar with Yosemite Valley will know immediately where this grove is located. This photograph was not made from the typical direction — and you may be able to spot the reason it isn’t photographed as often if you just look closely. A careful scan of the scene reveals the presence of a roadway! That is often a complete show-stopper for photographs like this one, but I liked the backlit tree against that darker forest enough to give it a try in this case.


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.

Alder Thicket And Stream

Alder Thicket And Stream
A small stream flows through the dense foliage of an alder thicket in Northern California redwood country

Alder Thicket And Stream. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small stream flows through the dense foliage of an alder thicket in Northern California redwood country

It was my first evening in redwood country, and I had only a few hours and little idea where to start, so I headed to Redwood National Park (part of the larger “State and National Parks” complex) and turned up a road toward a well-known grove of redwoods. I only stopped there briefly, deciding instead to explore further up the road even though I really had almost no idea what I would find up there. I finally broke out of the redwood forest at a couple of clearings from which I was able to get a broader overview of the surroundings. (It did occur to me that the larger one was likely there only because redwoods had been cleared from it many years ago.)

I now had a bit of a schedule to follow, as I hoped to find a place to photograph the last light of the day and then continue on to my lodgings in Crescent City. However, I often find it hard to resist a detour, especially when it looks like it might go somewhere interesting, so I turned off onto a side road that quickly dead-ended at the bottom of a canyon where a small creek flowed and the foliage grew very thickly. This was not actually a redwood forest location — at least not in this immediate spot — but the more open light among the alder trees supported lush undergrowth around this little creek.


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


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