Tag Archives: twig

Photographs: Nature

Japanese Maple, Spring

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Japanese Maple, Spring
“Japanese Maple, Spring” — New spring growth on a Japanese maple tree, Hakone Gardens.

We have a couple of Japanese maple trees that we planted many years ago at our home. (We thought they were small trees, but we now know from practical experience that they can grow to be very large!) They are beautiful trees, with lovely green foliage that is thick enough to provide deep shade in summer. They produce beautiful fall colors, and their seeds “fly” though the air — our kids called them “helicopter” seeds.

I photographed this branch of a Japanese maple during our spring visit to the Hakone Estate and Gardens, where there is a beautiful Japanese garden. We were there to celebrate the cherry blossoms, but there was much more to see as we wandered the grounds as the day ended and evening arrived.

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

Merced River, Branches, El Capitan

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Merced River Reflections
Merced River Reflections

Merced River Reflections. Yosemite Valley, California. November 30, 2005. © Copyright 2005 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Branches in the still water of the Merced River with floating autumn leaves and the reflection of El Capitan, Yosemite Valley.

This photograph is almost a bit of an optical trick. I’ll let you look for a second and figure it out…

… Does it make sense now? The foreground is composed of some intertwining dead branches just above the surface of a very still section of the quiet, late autumn Merced River in Yosemite Valley. The leaves floating on and just beneath the surface of the water give it away. Because there are so many branches, their dark reflections seem, to me at least, to almost merge with the shapes of the actual branches, creating a complex pattern. And, reflected in the surface of the water and appearing as a backdrop to these elements, is the sunlit face of El Capitan.

I would love to tell a great story about making this photograph… but I don’t remember making it! I discovered it only recently while reviewing all of my old raw files, and all I can say for sure is that I made it on one of my annual late October trips to The Valley to photograph the fall colors. For those who follow the technical stuff, I made this photograph with some pretty low-level gear back at a time when I was experimenting with my first DSLR. The camera was the very humble (but better than some think, at least for this sort of thing!) Canon Digital Rebel XT, an early 8 MP body. Even more humble was the lens, the not so swell EFS 17-85mm Canon lens.

(Note: This was originally posted on September 21, 2011. I’m moving this photograph back up on the home page today as this is a new revision of the original photograph — the date of the revision is December 26, 2014)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Japanese Maple Leaves

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Japanese Maple Leaves - A small branch of a Japanese Maple tree.
A small branch of a Japanese Maple tree.

Japanese Maple Leaves. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small branch of a Japanese Maple tree.

Japanese maple trees are ubiquitous in the gardens of Portland, Oregon, and during out early July visit to that town I had plenty of opportunities to photograph them. Here I decided to shoot a very small portion of a tree close up. I had been walking through this garden and focusing of larger views of whole trees and groups of trees and surrounding subjects, but when I walked past a small group of taller trees I noticed small twigs with a few leaves growing from the otherwise bare lower trunks and thought they might make interesting subjects themselves, especially in the very soft light in the shade of the taller trees.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Spring Cottonwood and Sandstone Cliff

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Spring Cottonwood and Sandstone Cliff - A cottonwood tree with early spring leaves stands in front of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah
A cottonwood tree with early spring leaves stands in front of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah

Spring Cottonwood and Sandstone Cliff. Zion National Park, Utah. April 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A cottonwood tree with early spring leaves stands in front of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

This was my first visit to Zion National Park – believe it or not – and I had been thinking about photographing cottonwood trees against red sandstone cliffs well before we arrived. We got there in the afternoon, checked in to our lodgings, and soon went up into the main canyon on the shuttle and then hiked up toward the Narrows from there.

It was a special and unusual experience for me to be photographing in an entirely new place, and to have very little idea of the geography of the Zion at all – I had almost intentionally avoided researching ahead of time, preferring to take it for what it was when I arrived. I was so naive that when we passed over a bridge and I looked downstream I thought, “Oh, that is the Watchman.” (For those who don’t know, the photograph of the Watchman Tower above the Virgin River, photographed from the bridge that crosses the river just inside the park is, roughly speaking, the Zion equivalent of photographing Half Dome from Sentinel Bridge in Yosemite.) We kept going, staring up at the beautiful sandstone towers and walls as the shuttle travelled up the canyon to the very end at the Temple of Sinawava, where we got off and started to walk. The walls in this very area are beautiful, and my progress up the trail was very slow as I stopped to gawk and photograph all of these wonderful new subjects, including this almost bare tree with its first spring growth. against the backdrop of the sandstone cliffs.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.