Tag Archives: water

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

Spring Cascade, Tioga Pass Road

June 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

A seasonal stream cascades over a granite ledge along Tioga Pass Road, Yosemite National Park.

This small cascade is one of hundreds seen along Tioga Pass Road on June 18 this year, the day the park service opened the road for the season. The opening date was later than usual due to the heavy snowpack, and there was water everywhere as the snow melt accelerated in the late spring weather. It was almost embarrassingly easy to find and photograph these subjects – this one was right next to the roadway.

This is part of a larger cascade, out of view to the right, that flows off the top of a granite area and drops quickly across granite cliffs. Here the water strikes a slanting ledge and bits of spray explode almost like Fourth of July fireworks. Obviously, the somewhat unusually long shutter speed was selected with this effect in mind. The reddish plants to the left, just beginning to come back to life after the long winter, hint at the early date in the season.

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

Spring Cascade, Polly Dome

June 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A seasonal spring cascade falls across the granite face of Polly Dome, Yosemite National Park.

I know that the chance to see the high country in winter-like conditions is part of what draws people to the opening of Tioga Pass Road, especially after a heavy snowfall season like this one. But for me the water is at least as much of a draw. The high country comes alive in ways that are not seen during the rest of the year. Because of the long and warmer days, the rate of snow melt accelerates, and when the snowpack is as deep as it is this year, that sets loose an amazing amount of meltwater.

I find full-flowing creeks in places where I didn’t even realize that water flowed. Creeks become raging torrents that threaten to jump their banks. In many places they do rise high enough to flood large expanses of meadow. Seasonal water falls and cascades appear almost everywhere you look.

I spotted this slender cascade high on the granite slopes of Polly Dome, above Tenaya Lake. My first idea was to make a photograph in which a longer stretch of the fall would appear, dropping perhaps several hundred feet. But as often happens, the more I worked this scene the more I wanted to eliminate extraneous material – and I ended up shooting at 400mm to edit out as much of the surround as I could.

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

Mount Conness and Lower Young Lake, Sunset

June 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Alpenglow lights Mount Conness above Lower Young Lake in the Yosemite National Park back-country.

I was recently going through a large portion of my archive in search of a variety of photographs of Mount Conness, a well-known peak along the northeast edge of Yosemite National Park on the crest of the Sierra. This is perhaps not the best known peak in Yosemite for most people – they are obviously going to be far more familiar with the cliffs and domes around Yosemite Valley or with Mount Lyell (the tallest peak in the park) or perhaps Mount Dana (second highest peak, and towering above the Tioga Pass entrance.) Mount Conness is found a bit further “north” along the crest, and while it may be less known, it is certainly no less visible once you know where to look. You can see it in the distance towering above Tenaya Lake if you stop at the iconic Olmsted Point overlook. It is visible from many places along the road to Tuolumne Meadows. Once you get away from roads and into the high country it can be seen from almost any high point with an open view in the direction of the peak, including places like Vogelsang High Sierra Camp.

This photograph was made on a quiet late-season evening at Lower Young Lake, a place that I return to frequently, most of the time in the off-season when fewer people are there and the fall colors of the high country are starting to appear. The peak (and many other features in this area) are beautifully illuminated late in the day as this high ridge is open without obstruction to the west. The light on the peak was magical on this evening, being colorful and contrasting with the higher and more drab clouds, but not being as gaudily bright as it can be on other evenings.

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

Alpenglow, Mammoth Peak

June 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Alpenglow lights the face of Mammoth Peak beyond a small tarn near the summit of Tioga Pass, Yosemite National Park.

This was very close to the last exposure I made on this productive late-July day last year. After photographing for a few hours in the vicinity of Tioga Pass, I ended up right at the pass as the day came to an end. Braving hordes of mosquitos – comes with the territory! – I worked the area around the pass itself, building compositions out of juxtapositions of the water in the small meltwater ponds, shoreline meadow and boulders, grasses growing along the edge of the water, the surrounding pine forests, and the more distant peaks of Kuna Crest. In this photograph, what is very nearly the very last direct light of the day is bathing the slopes of Mammoth Peak, which still had a fair amount of snow on its flanks even in late July.

This scene posed a few technical challenges. First, there is obviously a great distance between the foreground granite boulder and the very distance mountain. I wanted the foreground to be in optimal sharpness, so I used a relatively small aperture to maintain sufficient sharpness on the far ridge. There was also a fairly large dynamic range in the scene, ranging from soft but direct light on the snow fields of the peak to the dark areas within the forest on the other side of the pond. I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to handle the full dynamic range in one exposure, so I made three – one longer exposure to get a bit more light from the shadows and another shorter one on the dark side to avoid blowing out the brighter areas of the sky. In post, I discovered that there was enough detail in the shadows that I could get everything I needed from a single exposure, though I had to do some work with curves to get create an image the conforms more closely to the way I saw the scene at the time.

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