Tag Archives: trees

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees, Boulders, Shoreline

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Trees, Boulders, Shoreline
Boulders and trees along the shoreline of a Yosemite backcountry lake.

Trees, Boulders, Shoreline. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Boulders and trees along the shoreline of a Yosemite backcountry lake.

This dense and complex little scene caught my attention as I slowly wandered around the periphery of this Yosemite backcountry lake early in the morning a few years ago. I often look for a sort of compositional simplicity in photographs — some basic, underlying form that encompasses the elements — but sometimes I like to head off in the opposite direction and play with the idea of including lots of components in the scene. If I didn’t do this occasionally, I think I’d have to leave a lot of subjects out of my photography. So, yes, there’s a lot going on here: a couple of vertical lines from trees; a jumble of small trees and plants, the shapes and textures of the boulders, and even a bit of reflection in the water.

I made the photograph at a particular moment in the evolution of the morning light at this location. Because I was out and about very early, the first light I experienced was the soft, bluish light of the pre-dawn time. Before long the sun began to hit some of the surrounding peaks, and as this light spread it began to reflect warmer light in to the still-shaded parts of the landscape. At this point the light is still soft, but it is gradually and almost imperceptibly warming and becoming a bit more directional.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest Reflection, Morning

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Forest Reflection, Morning
Morning light on forest trees, reflected on the surface of a backcountry lake.

Forest Reflection, Morning. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on forest trees, reflected on the surface of a backcountry lake.

Photographing the special and transitory light at the start and end of the day reminds me of the experience of spring skiing. It can be great, but you’ve got to be there at the right moment, and it doesn’t last long. Early on a spring skiing morning the slopes (be they groomed or natural) are often badly frozen in the early morning. I’ve done a lot of cross-country skiing and a bit of telemark skiing, and I have to say that that refrozen slush can be really nasty stuff. But as the morning warms there is a point where the surface softens just enough and what was nearly impossible become quite wonderful… for a very short time, as the snow soon turns to slush.

Early morning (and evening) light seems a lot like this. In the same way that you need to already be on the slopes while they are icy to catch that bit of wonderful spring snow, you need to be up and about and finding your photographic subjects before the light is ideal — and while the cold and lack of coffee aren’t making things any easier. But if you are out there and you know where to look, at some point the light “happens,” continuously changing as the rising sun works its way across the landscape, illuminating a bit of meadow, a tree, the rim of a peak… and then it becomes too harsh and flat and is 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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Shoreline Trees, Morning Light

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Shoreline Trees, Morning Light
Morning light on shoreline trees at a backcountry Yosemite National Park lake.

Shoreline Trees, Morning Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on shoreline trees at a backcountry Yosemite National Park lake.

Our group spent the better part of a week camped near this northern Yosemite Lake, exploring it, its two companion lakes, and the surrounding high country. We camped in the forest a ways back from this lake, but it was only a minute away and thus became a daily subject for photography, especially in the morning when the light come over the ridges to our east and backlight the shoreline trees.

This subject, in this light, presented a pair of interesting challenges of the sort that you only learn to appreciate after doing landscape photography in such places. The first came from shooting toward the light from the edge of the lake. Photographers know the issues with flare that can result from light hitting the lens directly — but multiply that times two when the light comes from above and from the reflections from the lake’s surface. The gyrations necessary to block both often prove interesting. The second challenge was… mosquitos! Not just that the fiends, biting little devils annoyed us constantly, but also that their blurry forms tend to appear in photographs when viewed closely. You don’t know the meaning of fun until you’ve cloned a few hundred of them out of a photograph!

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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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

Trees, Ledge, Fractured Rock

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Trees, Ledge, Fractured Rock
Two trees grow tenaciously on a narrow ledge above a fractured cliff face.

Trees, Ledge, Fractured Rock. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two trees grow tenaciously on a narrow ledge above a fractured cliff face.

Nearly a decade ago I joined a group of friends and photographers at a Yosemite backcountry location. I was only there a few days, but they stayed for over a week — including a bout of incredibly cold early autumn weather than I managed to miss. (Although I wan’t there to experience it, I have heard the stories many times on subsequent backcountry trips with these folks.)

We were camped in a scenic location within in walking distance of a remarkable range things to see and photograph — lakes, meadows, ridges, granite slabs and ones, forest, and more. But I made this photograph only a few feet from camp, where low, fractured cliffs began to climb near the edge fo the lake and meadows. Like anyone who spends time there, I’ve long been fascinated by the relationship between Sierra trees and rock. Some trees, especially those growing in the rock, manage to eke our a life in little more than cracks in the granite and, in doing so, they sometimes seem closer to rock than to living things.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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