Tag Archives: tree

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Cottonwood Tree, Sculpted Rock

November 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A cottonwood tree with autumn foliage growing in sculpted sandstone terrain

The subject of this photograph is a sort of invisible icon. Let me explain. The location is not a very popular one by the usual standards. It isn’t easy to get to many places in this sprawling national monument. Things are not signed. There are no “photo spot” signs. The great majority of roads are unpaved and some are quite rough. You won’t find campgrounds with running water and flush toilets. Stores are few and far between. (While part of me is certain that its attractions deserve national park status, and frustrated that certain local politics will likely prevent this in the foreseeable future… another part of me thinks that the relative obscurity of national monument status may also have some benefits.)

Yet, there are places that seem to draw folks who love this land and are willing to search things out a bit. This particular sort of landscape of swooping, curving sandstone shapes, deep water pockets, and the occasional cottonwood tree is not that hard to find, and if you look around a bit you can find many, many examples. On this evening we photographed in soft light created by high clouds, and I decided to find a different angle on this lone cottonwood — one that would include it in a receding sequence of layers of sandstone formations.

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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood, Red Rock Canyon

November 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A fall color-tinged cottonwood tree grows in the depths of a red rock canyon, Utah

It is time to begin the Utah posts — I already have perhaps a month of photographs to share. (I still have more photographs from my late-summer back-country Yosemite shoot in the queue, but they can wait for a bit.) Utah, especially the southwest portion that I have visited frequently during the past few years, is an intriguing place for this California photographer. After decades of happily photographing my increasingly familiar home territory, it has been a special experience to work in a place where almost everything is new to me. I’ve gone there will few specific expectations, and I’ve made a point of not seeking out the familiar icons — though I have stumbled onto a few of them. (Yes, I do have a photograph of the Watchman. ;-) Compared to the gray tones of California granite, the red rock country of the Southwest is absolutely wild. Combine that rock with intense colors of green plants, yellow/gold fall foliage, blue sky and the effect is very different from what I’m used to shooting.

On my recent visit I managed to get into a number of canyons and gulches, which are perhaps the most magical of Utah places. In many cases, including the canyon where I made this photograph, the visit often begins in a place that looks nothing like this canyon scene — some dry, shallow wash or perhaps out on the flatlands above the canyon, where the air is dry and warm. I follow a path downstream and soon the wash becomes deeper and the walls rockier, and before long these walls rise to become cliffs and the world outside and above disappears, replaced by cool and moist air and water in the bottom of the echoing canyon. Trees and brush grow here, and sometimes you are caught up short when you encounter the sacred traces of people who made this world their home centuries ago. This photograph was made in such a canyon. At a stream crossing I made an almost random decision to climb up onto a higher route around a bend in the stream rather than following the the stream along the bottom of the canyon. As I crossed the slightly higher area I looked down into this world of red rock where a solitary cottonwood tree grows against the curving patterns of the rock.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Morning Haze and Light, Shoreline Trees

October 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees at the edge of a Sierra Nevada subalpine lake in morning light, Yosemite National Park

This is another photograph from that magical first day of shooting at a location that I would stay at for nearly a full week. As I wrote previously, the magic of this first morning comes from many things. Recognition is one of them — the experience of experiencing again the familiar elements of the Sierra backcountry that I have known for so many years: the sounds of gentle wind and water lapping at the end of the lake, the stillness of the morning air, that beautiful light coming over a ridge and striking trees and rocks from behind, the bits of detritus along the shoreline. A sense of expectation is another — the focus on seeing what is new at this place, the almost certain knowledge that I will discover new and unexpected things during the upcoming days.

On this morning I walked down to this lake for the first time. (I had arrived so late the previous day — after sunset, actually — that I had not even gone to the shoreline.) I began to circle around its west side slowly, first on a trail through flat terrain near where we camped, and then on rockier areas that forced me to ascend above the water a bit. All the time I was looking for subjects and compositions — though it would take a few more days before I fully fell into the ideal mode of seeing. I love backlight and I live juxtapositions of subjects, and I was attracted to the fringe of morning light on the branches of the trees at left and on the grasses below, and to how they contrasted with the deeply shaded area beyond.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Evening Light, Haze, Granite

October 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Soft evening light among granite slabs and cliffs in the Yosemite backcountry

Near our Yosemite backcountry camp there was a beautiful granite bowl, with a bench on top with an open view to the west down the canyon of the nearby river. In the late afternoon and evening we were photographing lots of mostly small details in this area — trees growing out of improbably small cracks and potholes, rocks, and the colors and textures of the granite slabs.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, its light spread almost directly up the length of the canyon. A large wildfire in another part of the park had left the air smoky and the smoke added a warm coloration to the atmosphere. As these conditions came on I remembered that in the past I had found this tree high up on one of the canyon walls in the evening and had photographed it in similar late day light — so I turned the camera in that direction, and just in time! I made a vertical format photograph as the last bright light broke over the shoulder of the granite and lit the tree. I decided to turn the camera to landscape orientation, and by the time I did the light was already starting to leave the tree — and this photograph ended up with softer light and a darker quality than the first one.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: tree

Autumn Cottonwood Tree, Sculpted Rock

Cottonwood, Red Rock Canyon

Morning Haze and Light, Shoreline Trees

Evening Light, Haze, Granite

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