Tag Archives: Wind

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Alpine Lake, Wind, Dusk

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Alpine Lake, Wind, Dusk
Evening wind on the surface of an alpine lake at dusk

Alpine Lake, Wind, Dusk. Sequoia National Park, California. August 10, 2008 © Copyright 2008 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening wind on the surface of an alpine lake at dusk

When we reached this lake we were approaching the end of a long trans-Sierra hike on the High Sierra Trail. We had crossed the Kaweahs, descending into the Kern River canyon, ascending to the John Muir Trail and headed south, with the eventual goal being the summit of Mount Whitney and the end of our trip at Whitney Portal at the eastern base of the Sierra.

This little alpine lake is the traditional base camp for hikers heading to the summit of Mount Whitney from the west, a group that includes a number of people nearing the end of the southbound John Muir Trail hikes. It can be a crowded place, with many backpackers (sometimes too many) setting up marginal camps in tiny flat spots among the boulders. In the evening I left my group to wander and do a bit of photography, and as the light faded I lengthened my exposures and allowed the wind to blur the surface of the lake a bit.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Horsetail Fall

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Horsetail Fall
Horsetail Fall

Horsetail Fall. Yosemite Valley, California. March 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Horsetail Fall in afternoon light, Yosemite Valley

As you may already know, Yosemite Valley’s Horsetail Fall draws visitors and especially photographers ever winter, roughly during the last half of February or so. During this period a miraculous conjunction of sunset light, a gap in the ridges to the west, and a wispy waterfall dropping over the edge of El Capitan may produce a momentary “natural firewall” for those positioned to the east of the waterfall. The sight is quite something… but in some ways it is almost more amazing to encounter hundreds of people who have traveled great distances to stand in cold or even snowy meadows to gaze upwards in hopes of seeing this ephemeral light.

I have photographed it in the past so I generally do not photograph it any more. In fact, I like to joke that one of the nice things about Horsetail Fall is that it clears the rest of the Valley of photographers in the evening! ;-) I must have confused at least a few people when I was there on the first day of March, at a time when people are still hoping to catch the phenomenon. We pulled into one of the two popular areas for viewing the fall, but in the late afternoon, well before the light was even hinting at what it could do later on. I looked up at the cliff high above and saw that recent rains had brought the fall to life, and that winds across the upper face of El Capitan were blowing the fall too and fro and carrying its wispy spray in all directions. The rock face was uniformly damp, and the late afternoon light was bright and silvery on the rock. I put a long lens on the camera and pointed it up toward this bright subject and made a few exposures as the wind whipped the falling water back and forth. Then I packed up and left… just as the evening throng of photographers was arriving and finding their positions to photograph what they hoped would be colorful sunset light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Dunes and Sandstorm

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Dunes and Sandstorm
Dunes and Sandstorm

Dunes and Sandstorm. Death Valley National Park, California. April 4, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Towering clouds of wind-blown sand rise above desert sand dunes, Death Valley National Park

In the early afternoon, a bit to my surprise and somewhat to my consternation, after returning to camp from shooting in another area of the park I got my first hints of the upcoming afternoon and evening sand storm when I noticed an increasing number of dust devils out by the dunes and when blowing dust began to rise along the far eastern side of the Valley. Although these events can be photogenic (and a bit dangerous to camera gear!) they are not very pleasant to be in, a fact that I know from previous experience. However, given that the weather otherwise had been pretty boring – too much blue sky! – at least this promised something a bit out of the ordinary.

So as the afternoon wore on I headed out, driving toward the eastern side of the Valley. As I passed this classic view of what is probably the most famous set of dunes in the Valley, large and thick dust clouds were rising behind the dunes. Oddly, there wasn’t all that much sand blowing on these dunes – just behind them on lower dunes farther north and east. So I paused to use the long lens to isolate the dunes, with their sparse plants, in the afternoon light with clouds of blowing sand mostly obscuring the peaks of the Grapevine Mountains in the Amargosa Range.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

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Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway
Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway. Big Sur Coast, California. April 14, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Pacific Coast Highway winds along the rugged California Big Sur coastline at Bixby Bridge

This is a pretty classic view of the California coastline, including a well-known section of the Pacific Coast Highway (route 1) below Monterey in the northern section of the Big Sur coast. Shot from high on bluffs above the ocean, where the highway climbs to one of its high points, the photograph looks north up the coast across pastureland on the foreground bluff towards the famous Bixby Bridge, located in the surf-filled cove just beyond. More bluffs and ridges dropping to the sea fade into the distant haze beyond that.

This was a beautiful spring day, so I got up very early and was in the Monterey area as the sun came up. The conditions were not quite what I expected. I knew that it was supposed to be windy, so I was expecting very clear conditions. The sky was clear of clouds, but there was quite a bit of low atmospheric haze – it almost looked like it wanted to be fog but couldn’t quite get it together to form clouds. This light does difficult things to colors, but it also creates an interesting contrast between the relatively clear closer objects and further subjects desaturated by the haze. It was also windy – very windy by the time I stopped shooting late in the morning.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.