Tag Archives: water

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

Siesta Lake, Summer

September 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The middle of a summer day at Siesta Lake, Yosemite National Park.

And, surprise!, yet another photograph dredged up from the archives during my summer crawl through the past eight years of raw files.

Siesta Lake is probably well-known to almost anyone who has driven across Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) from west to east through Yosemite National Park. As the road ascends from into the higher elevations, at one point it rounds a turn and there on the right is this pretty and peaceful little lake, right next to the road, surrounded by trees and boulders, and often with water lilies floating on its surface. Few can resist a quick stop, unless they are in a real hurry or have stopped there many times before. I’ve stopped there lots of times, but I still do pull over for at least a quick look.

This photograph of the lake is a bit unusual for me in a couple of ways. For one thing, it was made during the middle of the day, during those hours that are not supposed to be conducive to photography – and, in fact, which can be very challenging. But on this day there was a thin layer of overcast broken by thicker clouds, and this somewhat muted the midday intensity of the light. In addition, I think that I most often work close views of the grasses and, especially, the flowers growing in the lake – but here I stood back a bit and took in everything from the foreground to the trees on the opposite shore. Finally, the vast majority of photographs I’ve made here are in landscape (wide) orientation, with some even going all the way to 2:1 panoramic formats and beyond.

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

Thunderstorm Over Barney Lake

September 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rain from an afternoon thunderstorm begins to fall above Barney Lake, in the eastern Sierra Nevada near Mammoth Lakes, California.

This is yet another older photograph that I found again while reviewing nearly a decade of raw files recently. I actually have previously posted another similar photograph of this scene in the past, but I think this one is also effective and is somewhat different.

I came to this lake when I had to leave a group of friends with whom I was about four days into a 14-day backpacking trip in the central Sierra back in 2005. On day four I woke up feeling less that great and thought I might be coming down with some sort of “bug” that I didn’t want to deal with in the back-country, partly because we were about to enter a section of trail with no quick and easy way out, and also because I didn’t want to take a chance on slowing down or halting the rest of my party. So I bailed out on the morning of day five. The rest of the gang went south on the John Muir Trail while I backtracked to the north and exited over Duck Pass.

I recall the day fairly well – perhaps because I travelled the trail twice in two days! It was easy hiking back along the JMT to the turnoff to the pass, where I paused to enjoy the view of Duck Lake. As I began the ascent to the pass above the lake, thunderstorms quickly developed, and I recall being surprised when the rain started much more quickly and much sooner than I had predicted. I believe I had to duck (no pun intended) beneath a nearby tree and quickly take out rain gear and pack cover before moving on in the rain. After I crossed the pass and started the descent towards Mammoth Lakes, the storm moved elsewhere and rays of light broke over Barney Lake below the pass where I paused to make a few photographs of this light against the backdrop of more distant peaks and falling rain.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Staten Island Ferry

August 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Details of the Staten Island Ferry in black and white.

This photograph may need a bit of explanation. Though it might be fun for you to try to parse out what you are seeing first. Go ahead. I’ll wait…

We did the cheap thing on this afternoon after walking around parts of south Manhattan – we wandered over to the Battery Park, saw a ferry approaching, figured we had just enough time for a scenic round trip, ran to the terminal, and did the free over-and-back on the Staten Island Ferry. The price is certainly right, and the ferry provides interesting views of the Brooklyn shoreline and the south end of Manhattan.

This is a photograph of… not much. The only in-focus element is the vertical metal bar near the left side of the frame. There are windows in the frame as well, and they provide several layers of reflections along with some other “stuff” from the glass itself. (The fence-like object at lower right is actually behind my camera position.) I shot this with a very large aperture to get a narrow depth of field, so everything beyond the metal column is out of focus – the sliding windows, the portion of a person at the right edge of the frame, the water and horizon, and the barely visible bit of the Verrazano bridge in the right window.

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

Boulders, Shoreline Reflections

August 25, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Granite boulders lie in shallow waters of a sub-alpine lake reflecting shoreline trees, Yosemite National Park.

This quiet little lake lies unobtrusively just off of highway 120 across the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park. I’ve posted a few photographs from here before and noted that, as far as I know, the lake doesn’t even have an official name. There is just a small parking loop where you can pull out and then wander down to the lake, typically in complete solitude.

The light is a bit tricky here since the lake is in a depression where ridges to the east block the morning light. However, the wonderful rocks scattered along the shoreline make up for this! I made this photograph, and several others in the sequence, by shooting with a long lens from the other side of the lake. The low camera angle and still water created some very interesting reflections above the barely visible underwater logs and rocks.

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