Tag Archives: water

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

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

November 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The Tuolumne River enters Tuolumne River Canyon below the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp.

This photograph looks west from a rocky point along the Tuolumne River just below Glen Aulin in the Yosemite National Park back-country. In September I spent a total of four nights in this specific area and photographed in and around the granite bowl that rises from the river near the foreground rocks and spreads to the right of the area shown here. The photograph was made very late in the afternoon – it had been raining when I arrived at Glen Aulin but, as often happens in the Sierra, the clouds dissipated later in the day and the skies were starting to clear before sunset.

While my favorite Sierra landscape is at the elevations where the last small trees give way to alpine tundra meadows and the rocky slopes of the highest peaks, there is also something very compelling about these lower (from my point of view) elevation areas, and especially about this particular spot along the Tuolumne. Looking west from this point along the river I had the distinct feeling that I was standing more or less on a boundary between the higher and more alpine zones (exemplified by the Tuolumne Meadows area) and the beginnings of the lower areas in which I feel like I’m heading towards the Central Valley. Here, all of the really tall peaks are behind me (OK, some are to my right…) and before me the land overall drops towards the Valley, the slightly hazy light and air of which is in the far distance in this photograph.

Making this feeling even stronger for me is the fact that very close to Glen Aulin, the Tuolumne abruptly changes from a generally meandering river that descends very gradually for the most part past large meadows and forests to one that drops precipitously into an increasingly narrow and steep canyon surrounded by granite slabs and domes and peaks that begin to take on an appearance that reminds me of Yosemite Valley.

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: Imaginary Landscapes, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Surf, Rocks, and Horizon

November 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An imaginary landscape from surf, rocks and horizon at Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

I refer to photographs like this one as “imaginary landscapes” – though I suppose that this one is actually an imaginary seascape. The boundary between these photographs and my Regular Old Garden Variety Landscapes is a bit nebulous, but it relates to how far and how intentionally the interpretation of the scene departs from what might be regarded as its objective reality. In this case, some things were done at the time of exposure and some other things were done in post that make this image more obviously a subjective interpretation of the scene than might be the case with many of my other photographs. But you could see that by looking at it, right?

In any case, this is a single photographic “capture” made with a long exposure time that was extended by the use of a nine-stop neutral density filter – and this is what creates the majority of the soft quality of the image. Some additional work was done in post to further manipulate the original image – work with saturation and certain ways of diffusing portions of the image and so forth. In the end, little of that matters beyond the fact that these techniques were ways of producing the image that I had in mind, and which I intend to evoke something about the nature of the real scene upon which it is based.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Frozen Pond and Sierra Nevada Range, Owens Valley

November 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The snow-dusted eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada reflected in the surface of a frozen pond on the high desert of Owens Valley, California.

On a very cold early October morning this year I ended up driving out into Owens Valley toward the Owens River after I spotted some interesting morning fog while driving out of Mammoth Lakes on highway 395. Although I had started out with the intention of photographing aspens, when I saw the fog I changed my plans and decided to leave the aspen photography for later. I first drove to a small lake where I have photographed several times in the past, a lake that provides very still water at sunrise and great reflections of the peaks of the Sierra crest which were covered with the snow from a series of early season storms.

After sunrise I decided that I was finished at that lake, so I got back in the vehicle and went exploring on some gravel roads that wander around in the general area of Hot Creek and Owens River. At first I aimed for some ground fog-covered areas that I had spotted earlier, and for a section of creek where the warm water seems to frequently create interesting fog on cold mornings. I arrived at this creek, took a look around, and decided that it wasn’t quite what I wanted to photograph, so I kept driving, ending up on some roads I had not visited before. As I crossed one long flat area of rangeland I passed this mall frozen pond, drove a bit further, and then turned around to come back and photograph it with the early morning – but no longer dawn – like on the snow-covered peaks just south of Mammoth.

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

Autumn Foliage, Pond, Conway Summit

October 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon sunlight strikes fall foliage surrounding a small pond in the eastern Sierra Nevada at Conway Summit.

As is perhaps obvious from the photograph, the sky was not entirely unobscured when I made this series of photographs of the large aspen groves at Conway Summit in the eastern Sierra Nevada in the middle of October. The changing light was an asset in that it had the potential to highlight elements of the scene and de-emphasize others, and that it was constantly changing. But it also meant that at some points the scene was so flat as to be uninteresting. In other words, I had to stand around a lot, waiting for the light to suddenly appear, only to go away a moment later.

I had been watching this small pond, surrounded by aspens and brush and reflecting the sky, for some time. I wanted just the right side light to illuminate the trees and brush, but to also get something to happen on the more distant rolling hills. At one point beautiful light had lit up the foreground grove… but it had left the closest brush in shadow. At other points the more distant hills picked up interesting light… while the grove remained in shadow. Here I had a few moments of slightly cloud-diffused light on the grove (though I could have wished for a bit more on the trees at right) and brush, along with a beam of light picking up one of the more distant groves and the slanting ridge line in front of it.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts when this page is viewed on the web. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: water

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

Like this:

Surf, Rocks, and Horizon

Like this:

Frozen Pond and Sierra Nevada Range, Owens Valley

Like this:

Autumn Foliage, Pond, Conway Summit

Like this:

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

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

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