Tag Archives: twenty lakes

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

One Rock

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One Rock
“One Rock” — A solitary orange-tinted rock on a bed of blue and gray rock.

Rocks tell stories in the high country of the Sierra Nevada. I can’t understand the details of all of these stories (I’m not a geologist!) but I understand some of the themes. One is the constant wearing down and eroding of the highest peaks, a process that eventually transports rocks far from their source. And when this happens you find things like this solitary orange-toned rock sitting on a bed of entirely different material.

These small details fascinate me in the mountains. Yes, I do love and am impressed by wide panoramas and towering, dramatic ridges. But over time I’ve learned to look at smaller things. They provide so much material for photography, they are everywhere, and they turn seemingly familiar landscapes into endlessly fascinating places.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Wildflowers, Lake, Peak

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Wildflowers, Lake, Peak
Paintbrush flowers in the lakeshore meadow of a subalpine lake below the Sierra Nevada crest

Wildflowers, Lake, Peak. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Paintbrush flowers in the lakeshore meadow of a subalpine lake below the Sierra Nevada crest

This is pretty much a classic Sierra Nevada high country scene, from the zone this is my favorite — the region just below the tree line, where there the landscape is usually open and filled with rocky meadows and lakes and towering peaks. The intimate shorelines of the small high-country lakes and tarns are special, and more than once I’ve managed to spend a significant amount of time simply lounging by them in the middle of the day.

I reached this spot by way of a longer hike around a large lake, starting my walk close to sunrise. One side of the upper end of this lake features open forests, while the other side is an area of meadows and boulders, though which flows the outlet of the smaller lake in this photograph. I arrived by myself and went to work making photographs, mostly of the lake itself and the surrounding alpine scenery. After a while I finishing that work and commenced the serious business of sitting on a large rock and staring for a while. Finally, it was time to start thinking about my return hike, but before I departed I wandered over to this shoreline where these brilliant red flowers had caught my attention.

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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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