Shoreline Trees and Pond. Yosemite National Park, California. June 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trees ring a shoreline pond along the edge of a lake, Yosemite National Park.

This little scene is in a not-too-hard-to-find location in the Yosemite high country along Tioga Pass Road. I have another black and white photograph made in nearly the same location that is one of my favorite photographs from last year – in fact, it might be my favorite. I had sort of written off the idea of doing a color version of the same location, but now I’m rethinking that decision.

There are things I like quite a bit about this scene, though there is also one aspect that I’m not completely happy with. I’ll keep the specifics to myself, but one reason for posting this is to remind myself of how I want to re-shoot the subject this coming summer when I think I’ll be able to find very similar conditions once again.

There are a couple of tricky things about this location and this shot. For one, it is hard to find a clear view of the major elements of the scene that is compositionally interesting and does not include distracting elements. (That is something that I now think I may have a solution to…) For another the thing that makes the light so interesting – it is early morning and the trees are backlit – is also the source of a challenge with very wide dynamic range between the shaded portions of the trees and some bright spots of direct and reflected sun on the rocks.

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