Tag Archives: Wind

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Aspen Grove, Old Road

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Aspen Grove, Old Road - An old dirt road winds into the heart of an aspen grove in full autumn color, Dixie National Forest, Utah
An old dirt road winds into the heart of an aspen grove in full autumn color, Dixie National Forest, Utah

Aspen Grove, Old Road. Dixie National Forest, Utah. October 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An old dirt road winds into the heart of an aspen grove in full autumn color, Dixie National Forest, Utah

This is another of the “could have been anywhere” photographs, both because little scenes like this can be found all over the American West and because it is a scene that I simply happened to notice while passing by. So, the specific location is most certainly unimportant, though I’ll say that it was along a gravel road running through a section of the national forest in roughly the Zion/Cedar City area, a road that we had turned up more or less randomly and then explored for perhaps a couple of hours before turning back. The goal of that little drive had been to get into or as close as possible to some extensive forests of colorful aspen trees that we had seen from a distance. We succeeded.

There is something evocative on a number of levels about a simple scene like this one – with factors including the literal and subjective aspects of the changing season, the image of the small road disappearing into the grove as it wanders off to an unknown place, and the light of autumn filtered through the golden canopy of aspen leaves. If you don’t pay careful attention when you are there you might miss it, but the golden color suffuses the entire understory when the light is just right. (Photographers and painters may notice this sort of thing more than most people, since we/they are used to dealing with the otherwise blue coloration of the shadow light.) This sort of scene is extremely transitory. While we can permit ourselves to believe that both the green time of summer and the snowy time of winter are relatively permanent, no such illusion is possible during the brief span of literally a few days when the aspen color comes to these groves – they are different every day, and sometimes you can literally see the color going away as the wind blows down the leaves.

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.
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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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley

Three Towers, Morning

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Three Towers, Morning - Three tufa towers in morning light, surrounded by wind-blown patterns on the surface of Mono Lake, California.
Three tufa towers in morning light, surrounded by wind-blown patterns on the surface of Mono Lake, California.

Three Towers, Morning. Mono Lake, California. July 14, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three tufa towers in morning light, surrounded by wind-blown patterns on the surface of Mono Lake, California.

In mid-July I was in the Tuolumne/Tioga Pass area of the Sierra for a few days of photograph. In the end, I decided to stay over one extra night so that I could drive down to photograph around Mono Lake early in the morning before heading home. I was up before dawn, quickly in my car, and down to the shoreline of Mono Lake before sunrise. My first objective was to try to photograph sand tufa formations – not the more famous tufa towers. I found what I was looking for, and spend the sunrise period photographing them in first light. However, this opportunity quickly ended, so I turned my attention to the lake itself, along with its surroundings of low hills.

While the tufa towers are the iconic visual symbols of Mono Lake, I have some other and perhaps strong associations with the place. Most of them are connected to a time of day, early morning, when I most often visit. They involve near silence, broken only by the sounds of the many gulls and other birds that are found in and around the lake. In my memories, the air is still, and it is warm, the warm of early an early desert morning that holds the smell of sage and dust. And while the moment of sunrise is what I often go there to find, in the end it is the light that comes a bit later that sticks most in my mind. This light is bright – almost too bright to look into if the lake is hazy – and it is blue with distance. This is the light that I saw on this morning, with a bit of very light breeze forming slight patterns on the surface of the lake near three isolated tufa towers.

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

Forest, Meadow, and Stream

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Forest, Meadow, and Stream - A mountain stream winds through a sub-alpine meadow and past lodgepole forest beneath a snow-covered peak in evening light, Yosemite National Park.
A mountain stream winds through a sub-alpine meadow and past lodgepole forest beneath a snow-covered peak in evening light, Yosemite National Park.

Forest, Meadow, and Stream. Yosemite National Park, California. July 28, 2011. © Copyright 201 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A mountain stream winds through a sub-alpine meadow and past lodgepole forest beneath a snow covered peak in evening light, Yosemite National Park.

I know this scene is in Yosemite National Park. I know that it is in the high country along Tioga Pass Road, most likely not too far from Tuolumne Meadows. I know that I made the photograph in the evening after photographing certain other specific subjects in this area. But, for the life of me, I cannot identify the exact location. The peak looks very familiar and I can’t imagine that I had not earlier seen this little bend in the river, but one year after I made the photograph… I’m coming up empty! :-)

Still, there are plenty of things that I do know about this scene. It was late July of the second of two very wet seasons in the Sierra, and the results are plainly visible here in several ways. Even though it was almost August, there is still plenty of snow on the ridge and peak, which must be in the 11,000+’ elevation range, given the alpine appearance of the talus fields. That is a lot of snow for late July! (This year it looked about like that six or eight weeks earlier.) And, not surprisingly given the amount of yet-to-melt snow, the little meadow is still lush and green with early summer growth. And, of course, the stream itself is flowing strongly. I suppose that the main subject of this photograph was and is the beautiful fringe of late-day light on the little grove of trees on the bank of the creek as it meanders through the meadow.

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.
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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: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Sports

Kitesurfer, Pacific Ocean

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Kitesurfer, Pacific Ocean - Kitesurfer on the Pacific Ocean coast south of San Francisco, California.
Kitesurfer on the Pacific Ocean coast south of San Francisco, California.

Kitesurfer, Pacific Ocean. Highway One, California. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Kitesurfer on the Pacific Ocean coast south of San Francisco, California.

In the right weather conditions you can find people engaged in a range of water sports along the California coast in locations like this one a few miles north of Santa Cruz (and not far south of San Francisco.) In addition to the classic and iconic surfers, there are windsurfers and, as in this photograph, kiteboarders or kit surfers. It is difficult to not stop and make a few photographs when I catch the sight of a line-up of colorful sails just off the shoreline.

On this July day, a group of people were “playing” not far from the shore, alternately heading straight out into the ocean, only to return close to the shoreline where they could do some wild airborne maneuvers by picking up speed and then flying off the tops of waves. This fellow seems to be going for speed as he made a traverse of the area just beyond the beach.

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.