Tag Archives: wall

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

Utah Juniper, Sandstone Cliff

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Utah Juniper, Sandstone Cliff
Utah Juniper, Sandstone Cliff

Utah Juniper, Sandstone Cliff. Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. October 26, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A single Utah juniper tree in front of a sandstone cliff, Capitol Reef National Park

Shooting in this area of Capitol Reef National Park was a bit of a late-day whim. There had a been a bit of a slowing down of the photography earlier that day, and we almost felt a bit obligated to get out and do more photography in the evening. Hey, it happens! Feeling a bit less than inspired and with no specific goal in mind, we headed over to Capitol Reef and looked around, at first perhaps without a lot of enthusiasm. If you are a typical photographer, you have probably had such a day – the light doesn’t seem great, there are unfixable challenges with the location, and you just aren’t “seeing” it.

Eventually I thought it would at least be worthwhile to head up into a nearby canyon that I had visited before. We got out and prepared to walk up the canyon a ways. Before we did so, I saws this tree at the top of gravel hill at the base of the vertical sandstone cliffs and recalled that I had been interested in it when I have visited this spot once before. By now it was pretty late in the day, and the light shining through the thin overcast was bouncing off of canyon walls behind me and gently reflecting towards the wall behind this tree.

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

Tree and Granite Wall

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Tree and Granite Wall
Tree and Granite Wall

Tree and Granite Wall. Yosemite National Park, California. February 23, 2012. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A single tree grows against the face of a granite wall, Yosemite National Park, California

I’m well acquainted with this tree, though there is always more to learn about such things. It is next to a Yosemite road that I drive regularly, and near a location that I frequently stop to photograph in all seasons. Most often I’m not photographing this tree, but some other nearby subjects – but I always end up looking at the tree and considering its situation.

The tree grows very close to an impressively steep cascade of water, but it is not quite within the watercourse itself. Off to one side, it grows almost perfectly straight against the face of a very large chunk of granite that must have long ago fallen from the steep terrain above. While its trunk and branches, like those of many similar Sierra trees, can almost seem closer to rock than to a living thing, the green at the end of the thinner, darkened branches softens its appearance. And there is a bit more to the rock behind the tree if you look closely. There is a complex and varied pattern of lichen across its surface and in places it is broken up by cracks, such as the curving one at upper right whose curve seems to be faintly completed just to the right of the tree trunk.

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.
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: Architecture, Photographs: Urban/Street, Photographs: Utah

Room for the Big Deep Bend

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Room for the Big Deep Bend
“Room for the Big Deep Bend” — Scowercroft’s Never Rip Overalls – Room for the Big Deep Bend

At about the time I made this photograph, we were staying in Torrey, Utah for a few days. Instead of doing the obvious thing and heading east to visit Capitol Reef National Park again, we headed west towards points unknown but including the Fish Lake area. We passed through small towns whose lives seemed more divorced from the tourist trade than others we had been through along route 12, and eventually turned off the main highway to head up to Fish Lake. It turned out that, at least partially as a result of my decision to not do too much research ahead of time, we had missed the main fall color season there and that, in fact, the whole place was pretty much shutting down for the season. We poked around a bit here before reversing direction and heading back to highway 24.

Rather than end our exploration quite so soon, we continued on along highway 24, soon turned off into the Valley where Koosharem is located. I cannot recall now what drove the decision to go there – perhaps the unusual name of the place or maybe the possibility of getting to mountains on the far side of the valley – but there we went. We initially pretty much drove right through Koosharem and on out into the country on the other side of town, but we soon stopped and decided that this was not the direction we really wanted to go. We turned around and headed back towards Koosharem. This time a few things caught our attention, including the plain architecture of certain buildings in the town and the surprising – to us, anyway – appearance of this antiquated looking, though clearly kept up, sign on the side of this building next to a leave littered parking area that also held an ATV and some sort of small trailer. I wondered about this sign and the advertising copy it contained, and I later found out that Scowercroft and Sons was a fairly large manufacturer of clothing centered in Ogden.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves

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Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves - A single-leaf ash in a narrow sandstone-walled canyon begins its autumn transition from green to yellow, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
A single-leaf ash in a narrow sandstone-walled canyon begins its autumn transition from green to yellow, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 24, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A single-leaf ash in a narrow sandstone-walled canyon begins its autumn transition from green to yellow, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Now, coming back to this photograph quite a while after I made it, I distinctly remember that the gradient from yellow to green of these leaves caught my attention when I saw this small plant growing out of a crack in the water carved sandstone of this canyon wall. I’m often attracted by dark trunks and branches like those on this specimen, especially when they are seen against a background such as this pink sandstone with the patches of darker, lichen-covered rock.

The photograph was made in the same canyon in this national monument where I made a number of other photographs on this same very productive day – productive despite the difficult weather conditions, which were cold, windy, and a bit cloudy. Deep in the canyon and against this canyon wall, the best light is often that from completely clear daytime sky, since that sort of light reflects the best off of the canyon walls and carries with it the warm colors of the rock. Given that this was a tremendously windy day, the lack of leaf blur in this photograph indicates that it was made in a slightly sheltered area of the canyon and, no doubt, by waiting to shoot between the gusts.

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.