Tag Archives: trunk

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

Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake

September 19, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Morning light on the shoreline forest at Lower Young Lake.

After finally managing to convince myself to get out of my warm sleeping bag and bivy sack oh-so -early on this cold, late-summer morning, I grabbed my tripod, camera, and lenses and headed down to the shoreline of this lake. (That’s right – no breakfast. My routine is generally to simply get up and start shooting. I might work for as long as a few hours before the light is no longer what I want, at which point I make my way back to my camp to fix coffee and breakfast.) Although I know this lake pretty well at this point, there are always new things to discover when I look closely, and the conditions are never the same twice. Although I’ve walked past this little bit of shoreline forest many times – the trail goes right through here – this is probably the first time I’ve photographed this spot. I’m often intrigued by backlit trees – for the long shadows, the color of light coming through leaves and branches, and the darker and mysterious quality of the trunks – and several other things also caught my attention here. There was still a bit of late-season green in the small plants down close to the ground, and I liked the obstructed view of the lake surface, the far shore, and the rocky slopes above.

This type of scene and lighting poses some challenges, the most obvious being the wide dynamic range. There are very bright specular highlights reflecting from the needles of the trees and the bright areas of the tree trunks can also be very bright. In this scene there was an additional source of “bright” where the rocks above the far shoreline were directly lit by sunlight. The trick is to not blow out all of those highlights – though a bit of “blow out” on tiny specular highlights can be OK – while still retaining some detail on the shaded side of the trees. Often I resort to exposure bracketing (making two or three different exposures to be blended in post) and, in fact, I did approach this scene that way. However, by shooting RAW and working carefully in post I was able to control the highlights and bring back some of the subtle shadow details.

This photograph is 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: Cascades, Photographs: Nature

Roots and Rocks

September 3, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Weathered tree roots stretch across boulders at Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington.

I made this photograph at our first stop after we arrived at the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. (Technically, that isn’t quite true, since we had earlier stopped at the “ranger station” to ask some questions, but this was the first “real” stop for photography.) The road into this area twists and turns as it ascends toward and then past a ski area, and here we couldn’t help but pull over at a hairpin curve that provided a panoramic overlook to the valley below and the ridges to the east (?) of our position. Although the original reason for stopping was this dramatic view, I soon found nearby “intimate landscapes” to also be very interesting. While I often hike and climb long distances to find my photographs… for this one the tripod was on asphalt and the subject right next to the road.

On a technical note, for this photograph I used a lens that I’m increasingly fond of for photographing subjects like this one, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM (link to B&H). I find it useful to be able to put a bit of distance between myself and subjects in which the entire image may include only a few square feet, and the ability to fine tune the composition with the zoom is very useful. Although I didn’t do it in this photography, working with a slightly longer focal length also lets me have the option of isolating the subject against an out of focus background. I have the non-IS version of the lens – because that was the only version available back when I got mine – though I would almost certainly get the IS version if I were to replace it.

This photograph is 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Lodgepole Forest, First Light

August 17, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light touches the tops of lodgepole pines in a lakeside forest, Yosemite National Park, California.

This bit of dense lodgepole pine forest is on the far shore of an easily-visited lake along Tioga Pass Road, and I like to photograph it when the morning light is just starting to make its way over the tops of the surrounding mountains and it begins to touch the first trees along the lake shore.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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.

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

Forest and Lake, Morning

July 10, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A forest ascending a slope is reflected in the smooth waters of a mountain lake in morning light, Yosemite National Park, California.

As I passed by this mountain lake in the morning I noticed that there was a very shallow layer of fog or mist sitting on the surface of the very still water and moving slowly in the gentle morning breeze. I’m always a sucker for trees (and other things) reflected in mountain lakes, and in this case the blurred mirror image of the trees attracted me along with the way the trees receded as they marched up the slope on the far shoreline. While the sun was most certainly up by this time in the morning, it had not yet reached these trees along the shaded side of the lake below a tall ridge.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM at 91mm
ISO 100, f/16, 1 second

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