Tag Archives: water

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Morning Reflection

August 16, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The image of a shoreline forest is reflected in the still morning waters of a subalpine lake

Since the Tuolumne Meadows campground (along with everything else along Tioga Pass Road) was still not open during this late-July visit (in the aftermath of a very heavy snow year) I ended up camping at a forest service campground just outside the park. Since this place wasn’t ideally located for photography I ended up doing a fair amount of driving — down 120 towards Mono Lake and nearby areas, or back up 120 into the park. On this morning my pre-dawn drive took me over the pass, into the park, and down through the virtually deserted Tuolumne Meadows area.

I continued on along this road, eventually arriving this popular lake to find it deserted at this early hour. Later in the morning the hordes would arrive here, but in the very early morning I had it to myself. The water was almost still as I set up my camera, with the tiniest bit of mist floating above its surface. I made a couple of exposures, and suddenly the reflections were broken up as breezes began to stir the surface of the lake.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Low Tide, Fog, Drakes Estero

August 5, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Thinning fog above Drakes Estero at low tide

I spend a mid-July day hiking — at least once I had completed my obligatory bakery stop at Point Reyes Station — a route at Point Reyes National Seashore that I’ve had my eyes on for some time. It is a trail that starts in the upper recesses of Drakes Estero and, if you turn at the right junctions, finally goes all the way to headlands above Drakes Bay. I had, in fact, started this hike at least once in the past, but always a bit spontaneously and too late in the day, and each time I had turned back before completing it. This time I planned more carefully, and I was on the trail in plenty of time to complete the round trip.

This is a spare landscape, mostly without the vertical scale of places like the Sierra or even of the Big Sur coastline. Bare bluffs run along the peninsula that runs out toward the actual “point,” and the view extends more in the horizontal than the vertical direction. But what it lacks in vertical relief, this landscape can make up for as a canvas on which effects of atmosphere and light may play. My plan was to begin my hike at about the time the morning fog broke up, and to then follow the fog/sun line as in moved toward the coast. I was not entirely successful (it never did clear at the coast) but I timed it just about right for the start of the walk. This photograph comes from that early section of the route, when the clear sky above the dissipating clouds reflected its blue color onto the waters of the estero.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New York City

Sunday In The Park

August 4, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Visitors to Manhattan’s Central Park on a sunny summer afternoon

I love the natural landscape, especially my familiar “friends” of the Sierra Nevada, the California coast, the redwoods, the western deserts, and others that are close enough to me that I regard them as part of my greater neighborhood. But I also love cities. The differences between the two worlds are obvious — loud and fast versus quiet and still, lots of crowds versus solitude, a constructed world versus a natural one. But they are not, perhaps, as entirely separate as we might think. When we visit either of these worlds we invariably bring at least some of the world we left behind. (Sometime when I feel like writing a lot more about the topic, I may share some ideas I have about the dangers of regarding the natural and human worlds as being altogether separate and distinct.)

In any case, we were again in New York earlier this summer, partly for the city itself and partly (mostly?) to visit family. We ended up in Central Park more than once, and on the last visit I think we sort of got to experience the park a bit as the “locals” do, when we put together a picnic with our “kids” and staked out a spot in Sheep Meadow to join the New Yorkers on the Fourth of July. Perhaps because that which seems natural is here so overwhelmed by that which seems constructed, it seems like at least some New Yorkers may almost feel more strongly about their local “natural spaces” than folks do in less urbanized environments. This photograph was made on an earlier walk through the park, when we traveled along paths that took us past this small but very popular lake.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

From Tufa To Mountains, Dawn

July 30, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Predawn light above high desert mountains, reflecting on the surface of Mono Lake

Mono Lake is famed for several things, among them the remarkable tufa towers found in several locations along the shoreline of this great land-locked lake east of the Sierra Nevada. And, yes, this photograph includes a few of those towers — a small group that lies far enough from the shoreline to make them less accessible and interesting to most photographers. (No, that isn’t Nessie — or a band of Nessie lookalikes — at the lower left corner.)

But tufa towers are not my primary or strongest association with this place. Mine include more ephemeral things — the sense of huge space, the expanse of the sky (accentuated by the distance and smallness of surrounding mountains), the deep quiet that is broken only by the sounds of birds and wind. In my experience, to understand those things about this place you must find a quiet place away from other people and perhaps just “be” there quietly, long enough to let its stillness begin to affect you, too. On this morning I arrived in Mono Basin before dawn, ending up at a spot that is not typically regarded as being iconic. Being early, I was in no hurry, so I set up my camera and tripod and just looked for a while before beginning to make photographs of the predawn light from beyond the eastern mountains as it reflected on the breeze-ruffled surface of the lake.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: water

Morning Reflection

Low Tide, Fog, Drakes Estero

Sunday In The Park

From Tufa To Mountains, Dawn

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