Tag Archives: white

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

Rushing Water and Granite Slab, Sierra Nevada

March 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A Sierra Nevada creek, swollen from spring runoff, flows across granite slabs – Yosemite National Park.

The image and sound of spring runoff water rushing over granite slabs are common in the high Sierra. Though the scene is almost a generic one, for me it also brings to mind many very specific places and experiences throughout the range. (Some of my backpacking friends might think of a spot along Tyndall Creek on the John Muir Trail where we have camped more than once.)

The exact location of this little bit of cascading and rushing water is probably not very important – you are never far from a little scene like this if you are near almost any little creek high in the Sierra! Here the water flows mostly across very smooth rock – so smooth that you can see right through the rushing water to the rocks in many places. In this precise spot there is a weakness in the rock and a small ledge has formed, and the result is a bit of white water.

I’ll share a few technical observations about this photograph, too. First, there isn’t a sharp thing in the image! While sharp focus can be important, I don’t think it is here. (Though if you look closely, the patterns of the blurred, fast-moving water are sharp in a fuzzy sort of way. ;-) The rocks beneath the water cannot be sharp because they are blurred by the water; the water cannot be sharp since I intentionally chose a shutter speed that allowed motion blur. Second, I have to admit that I did not originally have a black and white photograph in mind when I made this exposure. I worked on it for a while in color and though I liked the motion of the water I just wasn’t happy with the coloration of the scene. I finally realized that this image wasn’t about the “reality” of the rocks and water but about creating an impression of the rushing water – and that perhaps monochrome might work. Third, this is yet another “landscape” photograph made with a lens that the “common wisdom” (which often turns out to be not so wise) would say is not a landscape lens – a 70-200mm zoom.

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

Melting Ice, Gaylor Lake and the Cathedral Range

March 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The distant Cathedral Range rises above the melting ice of Gaylor Lake, Yosemite National Park.

Near the end of June last summer I hiked up here late in the day with my friends Mike and Karl. This was a somewhat unusual season in the Yosemite Sierra, in that there had been a lot of snow during the winter season and it had continued right on into spring. Consequently, the high passes opened up later than usual, and on a very late June day when things would typically be a bit more summer-ish, it looked more like late winter up here when we arrived.

I’ve visited this place quite a few times, but had never seen quite this scene before. More typically, the snow and ice are completely gone by the time I manage to get up there, and a typical visit usually entails arriving late on a warm afternoon and then hanging out in the sun while waiting for the evening light to come on. This time we were in snow before we crossed the ridge before the lake, and we had to think a bit about just how to head down toward the lake since the usual path was covered in snow. The lake itself was (obviously, judging from the photo!) still covered in ice, though melting was underway and the surface was a jigsaw puzzle of alternating blue pools and white ice.

We found a location near clumps of trees on rocky talus slopes above the lake to do our photography. In this photograph I shot down the length of the lake to mostly fill the frame with the melting ice. Beyond a small rocky rise at the end of the lake, the terrain drops off towards the meadows of the Tuolumne region, and beyond rise the peaks of the Cathedral range in early evening light.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Branch, Water on Salt Flats

February 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 10 Comments

A forelorn branch sits near pools of reflecting water on salt flats of Death Valley National Park.

After the brief dawn light on the Panamints ended (see the photograph I posted yesterday) and the world went gray over in that direction, I noticed this odd log or branch sitting out on the mud in the salt flats between some of the ponds that streak this section of the flats. While the two minutes of beautiful color on the Panamints had ended, the increasing light was transforming what had been a fairly solid covering of gray into a transparency that revealed interesting layers and patterns of clouds in the morning sky.

I moved a bit closer and made one final sequence of Death Valley photographs before heading back to Stovepipe Wells to take down my camp and start the long drive home. I tried a couple different compositions, including some in which I was closer to the log, but in the end I prefer this one that put some distance between it and me and, I think, suggests the huge spaces that are among of the most compelling characteristics of this landscape.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Winter Branches and Sky

February 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bare branches of dormant trees against a cloud-dappled winter sky over the Central Valley of California.

This was a bit of a “grab shot,” made almost as an afterthought once I finished with another photograph and was taking down the tripod and putting gear away – hence it is a hand held photograph. I was somewhat aware of these clouds, since I had been photographing the sky (and other things) in a different direction, though those photographs included more distant subjects and a lot of intervening haze and clearing fog. Here, as is often the case during foggy conditions in the Central Valley, the shallow tule fog was in the process of clearing and leaving a very clear view of the sky straight overhead, even while a horizontal views were still obstructed by remaining haze.

The trees are from a more or less random grouping that happened to be next to the road where I had stopped. I cannot say what kind of trees they are. It was my good luck that these wispy (mares tail?) clouds happened to float over at the moment when I was here and looking up. After making this photograph, I got concluded my photography for the day and headed home.

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