Tag Archives: water

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

Bridal Veil Creek

November 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Bridal Veil Creek rushes and curves through boulders and forest, Yosemite Valley

This photograph has been sitting quietly in the RAW file archive for five years. I made a note to myself last year to go back and revisit it, and I left the note sitting on my computer desktop… but didn’t get back to it until this week.

This is a fairly classic Yosemite Valley scene, I think, being along the banks of Bridal Veil Creek not far below the famous waterfall with the same name. As I usually do, I had made a spring trip to the Valley to photograph during the period of high water and green foliage and had probably just indulged my tradition of arriving in the Valley and standing in the spray of this waterfall before getting down to the business of making photographs. I considered a color rendition of this photograph, with the subtle colors of the rocks and the water, but decide to go with a more “classic” black and white image – and, yes, I thought about some specific photographs by certain well-known photographers of Valley subjects that also focus on densely complex scenes with lots of details, a type of photographic challenge that I enjoy.

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: Sierra Nevada

Beaver Pond, Early Snow

October 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The first snow of autumn falls on an eastern Sierra Nevada beaver pond

We began our October visit to the eastern Sierra aspens with a very long drive from the north, necessitated by an early season snow storm that swept across the range on the day of our drive, closing all of the passes that are not normally plowed – Tioga, Ebbetts, and Sonora. So we drove over Carson and Monitor Passes to reach highway 395. The snow started before we reached the summit of Carson pass and continued intermittently throughout the rest of the day – never enough to interfere with our driving (aside from the closed passes) but enough to make the photography interesting and to create an appearance that seemed more winter- than autumn-like.

As we headed south on highway 395, we stopped quite a bit to make photographs or even take a side road detour or two. Just before reaching Lee Vining we headed up this canyon, which is known as a good spot of aspens – and for a very narrow section of roadway that passes along the side of a so-called beaver pond. I’ve been past this spot many times, but this was the first time in falling snow. The gray skies and the falling snow created a very peaceful effect around the pond, and we paused to photograph it before making a brief visit to the trailhead at the end of the road.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Shoreline, Morning

October 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The shoreline of an unnamed sub-alpine lake in the Kings Canyon National Park High Sierra.

I made this photograph along the shoreline of one of the many small lakes lying within a very short walk from our back-country campsite high in the eastern Sierra near the crest in Kings Canyon National Park. On this morning I headed up canyon with vague ideas about looking for back-light, a favorite condition/subject of mine in the Sierra. I first wandered up one side of the canyon and after finishing my slow amble at a main lake I reversed my track and headed back down the other side of the narrow valley, passing this small lake.

At just about this time the sun cleared the higher ridge to our east and its morning light arrived at the shoreline. The back-light creates a fringe of light in the outer needles of the trees and it illuminates the willows and other smaller plants that were beginning to take on autumn colors. Here the clear water near the edge of the lake was very shallow, and the patterns of the submerged shoreline rocks continues the rocky character of the shoreline. In typical high Sierra fashion, there is rock everywhere, with much of the vegetation working hard to find sustenance in rocky soil between the granite outcroppings and slabs.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Emerald Lake and Granite Benches

October 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A series of granite benches with back-lit trees rises above the emerald waters of a sub-alpine Sierra Nevada lake, Kings Canyon National Park

This photograph includes several features that say “Sierra Nevada high country” to me, and which immediately evoke a whole range of associations that have evolved over decades of backpacking, hiking, skiing and otherwise being in that world. The rounded granite slabs and benches rising toward more distant talus slopes are a common feature of these mountains. The small, widely spaced trees growing in the rocky terrain not far below timberline are another. The late-season brown grasses and yellow willows are a part of the annual cycle announcing that winter will soon be arriving. And everywhere, small but deep lakes scooped out by glacial action can both reveal the patterns of shoreline rocks and descend into deep emerald blue.

This is – no surprise by now, perhaps! – one more photograph from our mid-September time photographing in the back-country of Kings Canyon National Park, camped for the better part of a week in an area of many beautiful lakes near the 11,000′ level. This was an incredibly rich field for making photographs, and we were able to “work” it for the full-time and rarely walk more than perhaps 15-20 minutes from our camp. This small lake was simply one of many small lakes in this area, and I passed by it several times as I wandered up the meadows and granite of the valley above our camp.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: water

Bridal Veil Creek

Beaver Pond, Early Snow

Shoreline, Morning

Emerald Lake and Granite Benches

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