Tag Archives: wilderness

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

Forest And Cliffs, Evening

September 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees, lit by evening light, ascend granite cliffs in the Yosemite National Park back-country.

From September 14 through September 21 I spent eight days on the trail in the back-country of Yosemite National Park, starting and ending at Tuolumne Meadows, taking time to photograph some of the areas I passed through. I was fortunate to be able to join up with a group of five outstanding Yosemite photographers on all but the last day – they were to remain in the high country for several more days after I left.

On the second evening of the trip I walked to a nearby rocky area to photograph, well, rocks – granite slabs, actually, that are marked by reddish deposits and broken up by trees struggling to grow in cracks and small pockets of soil in the rock. I also wanted to photograph a nearby section of the Tuolumne River as it descended through some steep areas of granite as it entered a narrower section of canyon. I started working perhaps an hour and a half or so before sunset, and as actual sunset approached I looked up from these subjects to see the light from the lowering sun beginning to backlight trees high on a cliff above my position and to angle across the edges of the cliffs themselves. I switched gears – and lenses – and began to work on finding compositions in this rocky terrain, seen through a bit of haze and lit by increasingly warm light.

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

Sunrise, Ediza Lake, Minarets, and Mounts Ritter and Banner

September 8, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First sunrise light on the Minarets, Mount Ritter, and Banner Peak above Ediza Lake, Sierra Nevada, California.

I made this photograph during a long and leisurely pack trip into the Minarets area of the Sierra Nevada near Mammoth Lakes. It was leisurely because I accompanied my brother and his family – and the fact that some kids were on the trip contributed to the slower hiking pace… as did the fact that both he and I wanted to make photographs.

This is a popular and accessible area of the Sierra, and also one that is a bit unusual. Typically the highest peaks of the range are found on the actual crest, but here the Sierra crest is further to the east and rather low, being right about where the Mammoth Ski Area is located. Across an intervening valley – a valley that holds Devils Postpile National Monument – loom the high and jagged peaks of the Minarets, a series of impressive spires, and the summits of Mount Ritter and Banner Peak. While in most of the Sierra the areas to the east of the highest peaks descend rapidly to the high desert, here the areas below these peaks remain very high and provide a different view of the eastern faces of the peaks.

The photograph was made very early in the morning along the shoreline of Ediza Lake on a day when clouds were already starting to build even at this early hour. Yes, there was rain later on!

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

Greenstone Lake, Morning

August 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on Greenstone Lake and surrounding trees and rocky terrain.

Greenstone is a relatively small lake just beyond the upper end of Saddlebag Lake, which is itself located just east of the Sierra crest and Yosemite National Park in an area dominated by Mount Conness and the tall ridge on which it stands. I had arrived before dawn at the Saddlebag Lake parking lot so that I could be on the trail before sunrise. Rather than giving in to the temptation to pay for a “water taxi” ride to the other end of the lake, I took the trail along the left shore, and arrived at Greenstone Lake just about the time that the first direct light was making its way down to this lake and the surrounding rocky hillside.

In this wet year with its late arrival of summer conditions, everything was still very wet around the lake and the meadow plants were still green and growing. (In dry years they start to finish up their growth spurt and begin turning brown by this time.)

I think this lake is a bit tricky to photograph in morning light. The light could be lovely at sunrise, but it would still be well up on the high ridges above the lake. It takes a long time for the sun to get high enough to rise above the ridge leading to Tioga Peak, and by that time most of the early morning warm light quality has given way to more typical daytime light. There were a few challenges in this photograph. They included trying to figure out how to find a workable composition in such a complex scene that was made even more complex by the reflections in the water. I think the triangle of rocky terrain in the upper half of the frame may help with this. The light posed several problems, mainly related to the very large dynamic range between the bright rocks and the shaded areas of forest at upper right. The light color was also tricky – because the shadows tend to be much bluer in a photograph than your eyes register when you are there, I had to mute the very blue quality of the shadows. This was done partly with an overall adjustment to color, but some additional work had to be done directly on the shadows.

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

Flooded Meadow Near Greenstone Lake

August 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Late-season snow fields are reflected in the pond of a flooded alpine meadow near Greenstone Lake, Sierra Nevada.

During this year of heavy and late winter snowfall, there is still a surprising amount of snow in the Sierra Nevada high country. In the upper portion of this image you can see large snow fields (with much larger ones higher on the slope and out of the frame) at that base of this talus slope at around 10,000+ feet of elevation. During a more typical year, there would still be a few scattered snow fields, but nothing like we see this year. And because there is still so much snow, the plants that would normally be well-developed by now are still just emerging, and the creeks and ponds are overflowing, the meadows are flooded… and the mosquitos are having a field day!

This little pond among the boulder-filled meadows near Greenstone Lake at the far end of Saddlebag Lake was still overflowing with snowmelt water that reflected the extensive snow fields still on the talus field beyond. To get to this spot – in mid-August! – I had to cross a number of still frozen snow fields, follow trails that were flooded in places, and pick my way carefully across waterlogged meadows. It is going to be a short summer season in the high Sierra, but as a compensatory bonus we may still see wildflowers all the way into September.

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