Tag Archives: wilderness

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Trees and Cliff, Morning

2 Comments
Trees and Cliff, Morning - Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.
Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.

Trees and Cliff, Morning. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. September 16. 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light spills over a high ridge to back light trees near Steelhead Lake.

This photograph was made from a point perhaps ten feet (or less!) from my bivy sack. We were camped at out-of-the-way Steelhead Lake, up above McGee Canyon and off the main trail to McGee Lakes and McGee Pass. While I had looked up McGee Canyon from the trailhead before – almost every year while photographing aspens, in fact – this was the first time that I had backpacked up this route and had a chance to actually explore the area. We ended up staying at this lake for two nights, providing time to do a bit of exploration and to see certain subjects that I might have missed with a shorter visit.

I had seen and photographed (though in a different way) this little clump of lakeside trees the morning before, but after thinking about them a bit more I felt that I’d like to shoot them again the next morning. The light at this lake is a bit tricky in that there is a very high ridge to the south and east that blocks the light until quite late in the morning. No morning golden hour shots at this lake! The ridge holds two of the four “railroad baron” peaks that surround Pioneer Basin – Crocker and Stanford. (The other two are Hopkins and Huntington.) A few years ago I had investigated Pioneer Basin on a separate trip and had stood on top of this very ridge and looked down towards this year’s camp. In any case, I had an idea to shoot the trees against backlight, and almost as soon as the sun appeared above this ridge I went to work. I had to shoot essentially straight into the sun in order to get the glowing atmosphere in the canyon beyond the first ridge, and even with a long focal length I was barely able to keep my hand out of the frame as I shaded to front of the lens.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Plants, Granite, Morning Light

2 Comments
Plants, Granite, Morning Light - A few sparse plants grow in thin cracks in granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.
A few sparse plants grow in thin cracks in granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Plants, Granite, Morning Light. Yosemite National Park, California. August 12, 2011. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A few sparse plants grow in thin cracks in granite slabs, Yosemite National Park.

Portions of the Sierra high country in Yosemite have been heavily glaciated. The evidence is widespread and familiar in all of its variations: domes, U-shaped canyons, remnant glacial ice-fields and a few vestigial glaciers, glacial erratics everywhere, a terrain crossed with the remains of lateral, medial, and terminal moraines. And it places, such as this area along Tioga Pass Road, there are huge expanses of granite slabs, sloping and rounded nearly solid rock broken by cracks and dikes and surrounded by the debris of gradual erosion.

Lots of things managed to live on and in these slabs. The tiniest cracks collect sand, then dust and gravel, and soon small plants spring up and even wildflowers. In some places – including the more distant ridge in this photograph – large trees manage to sustain themselves by growing entirely in these cracks. In this photograph I juxtaposed the nearby small plants crowing in a couple of shallow cracks with the receding sequence of rolling dome-like ridges with shattered rock and a few trees, some of which catch the early morning sun, with details softened by the (perhaps unusual, for landscape photography) use of a small aperture to minimize depth of field.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Forest, Tarn, and Granite

1 Comment
Forest, Tarn, and Granite - Sierra forest and granite reflected in the surface of a small tarn, Yosemite National Park.
Sierra forest and granite reflected in the surface of a small tarn, Yosemite National Park.

Forest, Tarn, and Granite. Yosemite National Park, California. July 28, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sierra forest and granite reflected in the surface of a small tarn, Yosemite National Park.

Having visited the Sierra and the Yosemite high country for more than a few decades, I have become attached to a number of small and unlikely little places that have personal meaning to me. This is one of those odd little spots. At a point along Tioga Pass Road there is a small unmarked turnout like many other such turnouts along this route. One time a few years ago I stopped here for reasons that I can no longer recall. I got out of the car and noticed a very faint path leading away from the road – so, of course, I took it! It led though tightly spaced trees and towards a small canyon, passing several small ponds along the way. I also recall mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos.

Since that time I have returned to this spot quite a few times – in snow on the day that the road first opens, on sunny summer days like this one, and on damp and foggy evenings in late fall not long before the highway closes for the season. Where is the spot, exactly? All I’ll say is that it is in Yosemite and that you can get to it by walking away from Tioga Pass Road. Frankly, I don’t think the specific location really matters to anyone but me and perhaps a few others who might stop here, too. There are thousands of such little spots throughout the Sierra, and it is your discovery of your own personal places among them that can make them special.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Community, Technique

Backpacking Photography Season Once Again!

4 Comments
Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin
Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin

Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

It seems like a good time to once again share my Backpacking Photography Equipment post, since summer is nearly upon us, and many of you will soon be joining me to head into the back-country to make photographs. Some of you  are trying to figure out the best balances of gear, weight, bulk, and complexity for doing photography on the trail using the trial and error (trail and error? trail of terror?) approach. Few years back I thought it might be helpful to share “my own backpacking equipment” list along with some ideas about how to select and use it.

The article is here: My Backpacking Photographing Equipment.

Enjoy! And see you on the trail!

A little more about the photograph included in this post… The two backpackers are my long-time “trail buddies,” Owen and Caroline, with whom I’ve spent many weeks on the trail in the High Sierra. On this trip we visited a lonely and less-visited area in the Upper Kern River drainage. The night before we had camped in a place where it was almost possible to convince oneself that no one else had been there before – a truly rare and cherished Sierra experience. The next morning we descended a drainage that passed through beautiful rock-garden meadows filled with tumbling streams. As the two of them crossed this meadow I quickly dropped my pack and made a couple of handheld shots.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.