Tag Archives: trees

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

Seasonal Waterfall

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Seasonal Waterfall
Mist floats above the seasonal cascades of Sentinel Fall in late afternoon light, Yosemite Valley

Seasonal Waterfall. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mist floats above the seasonal cascades of Sentinel Fall in late afternoon light, Yosemite Valley

Tourists often visit Yosemite Valley in the very late spring and the summer, the season when the best-known waterfalls are flowing strongly — Yosemite, Bridalveil, Vernal, and Nevada falls being the most popular. They are spectacular, and they are worthy of a visit on their own. However, they are far from the only waterfalls in the Valley. (And the Valley is far from the entirety of the park!) There are many less-known waterfalls that a quite beautiful.

Many of these other waterfalls are seasonal, flowing for brief periods when the winter snow melts or coming to life mainly after storms. They tend to be quite ephemeral since the conditions that support them are often rather specific and short-lived. A number of the ephemeral Valley waterfalls are fed by streams having their origins in middle-elevation valleys that are not terribly large. As such, the bulk of winter snow melts over a short period of time… and the falls usually dry up completely. This fall is a prime example. It appears in the right conditions along the southern walls of the Valley (oddly, it is close to another, similar seasonal fall), but by summer it diminishes to a trickle and then disappears. On the day I photographed in mid-April it was flowing strongly following recent storms, producing a series of impressive waterfalls that combine to produce a spectacular drop from the rim to the floor of the Valley.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese and Pond, Sunset

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Geese and Pond, Sunset
Snow geese and Ross’s geese on a small island in a wetland pond

Geese and Pond, Sunset. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Snow geese and Ross’s geese on a small island in a wetland pond

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we expect temperatures as high as 100 degrees in inland areas. Summer is here, and with a vengeance. I like summer — long daylight hours, little need to worry about that warm jacket, and more — but it is not my favorite season. I prefer the shortening days and golden colors of fall, the interesting weather and light of winter, and the reawakening of spring, to be honest. In other words, with this photograph I am engaging in a bit of nostalgia for the past winter and a bit of expectation of the seasons that follow the one in which we now find ourselves.

While we might think of winter as being a time of less life and growth — which is surely true in most places when it comes to vegetation — the annual migration of birds inclines in the opposite direction. At the time of year when days are short, weather is cold, and growing things are in decline… the birds show up again. I photographed these birds on a late-autumn evening in early December, when trees were still shedding fall leaves and the birds were just beginning to return along the Pacific flyway.

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.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwoods in Sun

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Redwoods in Sun
A beam of filtered sunlight illuminates redwood trees deep in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park

Redwoods in Sun. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A beam of filtered sunlight illuminates redwood trees deep in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park

I had a portion of one day to spend at Prairie Creek Redwood State Park. I could easily have spent more time there, but I wanted to make first visits to several of the redwood parks, so I saved this one for my last day in the area. Arriving at the park my first subject wasn’t redwoods — instead it was a remarkable grove of alder trees. I finished there and moved on into the center of the park, looking for a particular trail that I thought might have some rhododendron blooms. (It turned out that I was probably a few days early for that.)

I arrived at the trailhead, shouldered my camera pack, and started walking… slowly. While I can hike efficiently and cover distance, when I photograph my speed slows profoundly, and what I call hiking might more accurately be described as ambling. As I wandered up this trail, following it up into a redwood-filled valley, the light constantly changed. High fog was breaking up, and one minute it would be bright (too bright for photograph) and then next minute the clouds muted the light. I stopped at this spot where I could look across the valley and focus on a spot many feet up the trunks of the trees. I waited for the clouds to block the sun and mute the light before making a few photographs.

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.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwoods Great And Small

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Redwoods Great And Small
Dense Northern California redwood forest containing both old-growth and young trees

Redwoods Great And Small. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense Northern California redwood forest containing both old-growth and young trees

I’ve lived on the fringes of California’s coastal redwoods ever since my family moved to the state when I was four-years-old. For years we did weekend trips to places like Big Basin Redwoods State Park, often hiking through the trees and beyond. So I have always been familiar with these extraordinarily tall trees and with the special forests they inhabit. However, it wasn’t until much later that I understood how truly rare the original old-growth forests are. I recently read that only 5% of the original forest was left mostly untouched — meaning that 95% of the trees (19 out of 20!) were cut down during a fairly short period, mostly in the 20th century. This was an astounding example of where greed can push humankind, and we can reasonably imagine that without intervention all of the old-growth forests would have been lost forever. If that greed had gotten its way, you would have to reimagine scenes like this one with only the slender trees on the right, because certain parties would have cut up every accessible tree like the one on the left.

Today it seems bizarre to recall the strong objections to saving these remnants back when the Redwood National Park was first proposed. Even conserving parts of the last 5% of the ancient forests seemed to be a bridge to far for interests blinded by their long-term investments in a nearly depleted natural resource, and they fought bitterly against that parks. There are several lessons in this. This was not isolated resistance to conservation — it has been the pattern with the creation of essentially all of our great American parks and other efforts to protect wilderness and natural areas. There are [i]always[/i] a few very loud voices shrieking that the protection of a few last remnants of America’s great landscape will ruin their economy. (Witness the Utah minority today working to undo national monuments.) However, now that our park system is well over a century old, it is plainly obvious that virtually every single protected area is regarded as a treasure and virtually no sane person would argue that we did the wrong thing by protecting them.

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.