Tag Archives: young

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

Rocky Shoreline, Lower Young Lake

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Rocky Shoreline, Lower Young Lake
Rocky Shoreline, Lower Young Lake

Rocky Shoreline, Lower Young Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 14, 2010. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light shines through the forest on the rocky shoreline of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park.

The three Young Lakes are among my favorite places in the Yosemite back-country, and I visit them pretty much every summer. As I did when I made this photograph, I most often to in the last season – I like to visit after Labor Day weekend, when the crowds begin to diminish, the weather is a bit cooler, fall colors begin, and everything in the Sierra seems to slow down in anticipation of the coming winter.

On this visit I camped for something like three nights at the lower lake, and thus had time to photograph throughout the basin at different times of day. On this morning I got up early as I usually do, and spent a good part of the morning photographing along the shoreline of this lake, starting in the area near where most people camp and where the trail passes along the shoreline. A bit later I crossed the outlet stream and followed the rocky shoreline around to the far shore where the forest opens into rocky meadows near the main inlet stream.

In the photograph, the early light is coming from behind the trees in the shoreline forest and glancing off the tops of the boulders on the shore and in the shallow water. There were two photographic challenges in making this photograph. First, the dynamic range between the brightest sunlit spots on the rocks and the darker areas in the forest is extreme. In some cases I might resort to blending multiple exposures as a way to deal with this issue, but here I was able to recover enough detail from a single frame. The second issue relates to the color of the light. Specifically, while the sunlit areas have a fairly warm quality, the light in the shadows on the rocks and in the shaded areas of the forest turns out to be distinctly blue in a photograph. In fact, these areas end up looking much more blue than you would think if you were there – this has to do with the way our minds process what we see to make it more like what we think it should be… if that makes any sense. In any case, the decisions here ended up being about how much blue would be the right amount.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Mount Conness and Lower Young Lake, Sunset

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Mount Conness and Lower Young Lake, Sunset
Mount Conness and Lower Young Lake, Sunset

Mount Conness and Lower Young Lake, Sunset. Yosemite National Park, California. September 11, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Alpenglow lights Mount Conness above Lower Young Lake in the Yosemite National Park back-country.

I was recently going through a large portion of my archive in search of a variety of photographs of Mount Conness, a well-known peak along the northeast edge of Yosemite National Park on the crest of the Sierra. This is perhaps not the best known peak in Yosemite for most people – they are obviously going to be far more familiar with the cliffs and domes around Yosemite Valley or with Mount Lyell (the tallest peak in the park) or perhaps Mount Dana (second highest peak, and towering above the Tioga Pass entrance.) Mount Conness is found a bit further “north” along the crest, and while it may be less known, it is certainly no less visible once you know where to look. You can see it in the distance towering above Tenaya Lake if you stop at the iconic Olmsted Point overlook. It is visible from many places along the road to Tuolumne Meadows. Once you get away from roads and into the high country it can be seen from almost any high point with an open view in the direction of the peak, including places like Vogelsang High Sierra Camp.

This photograph was made on a quiet late-season evening at Lower Young Lake, a place that I return to frequently, most of the time in the off-season when fewer people are there and the fall colors of the high country are starting to appear. The peak (and many other features in this area) are beautifully illuminated late in the day as this high ridge is open without obstruction to the west. The light on the peak was magical on this evening, being colorful and contrasting with the higher and more drab clouds, but not being as gaudily bright as it can be on other evenings.

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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

Young Trees and Meadow, Tioga Pass

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Young Trees and Meadow, Tioga Pass
Young Trees and Meadow, Tioga Pass

Young Trees and Meadow, Tioga Pass. Yosemite National Park, California. July 22, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Young trees grow along the edge of subalpine meadows at Tioga Pass, Yosemite National Park.

This meadow, right below Tioga Pass – which is among the trees in the saddle in the upper part of the photograph – is something of a magical spot in the Sierra. It is, of course, the highest point that you can drive to in the park, and it sits right on top of the crest of the Sierra Nevada. At just slightly less than 10,000′ of elevation it is verging on the true alpine zone. Because of elevation and location, it is only open for a few months each year between roughly the end of spring and generally some time in November. (For those of us who think of this as it looks in summer, it is sobering to remember that during the majority of the year it is a cold and snow-covered place.) Once you pass over Tioga you begin to descend into the very different world of the high deserts east of the crest. Yes, it still feels like the high country for a while, but within miles you are in hot dry places that are not at all like this alpine terrain.

Oddly, while a thin band of trees crosses the saddle at the pass, much of the area on either side is meadow. This section is on the “Yosemite side,” and is an extension of the many meadows along the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River which drains this area around Mount Dana. As if to reinforce the idea that this is not as gentle a place as it may appear in the summer, parts of the meadow are filled with the bleached remains of trees struck down by avalanches from the ridge that is out of this photograph to the left. The trail to the summit Mt. Dana, of the second-highest peak of Yosemite (being a few feet shorter than Mt. Lyell), begins by crossing this meadow.

Although I drive over this pass with some frequency, I virtually always stop and get out of the car and look around for at least a moment. On this late-July visit I stayed more than a moment, spending a good portion of an afternoon wandering about the meadow and photographing these young trees, small streams and ponds, fallen trees, some of the more distant mountains, and much else.

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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

Young Tree and Granite Wall

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Young Tree and Granite Wall
Young Tree and Granite Wall

Young Tree and Granite Wall. Yosemite Valley, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A young tree grows against a granite wall along the north side of Yosemite Valley.

This tree (and its nearby oak partner) and I have become good friends over the past few years. I first photographed it in the fall some years back, though the oak made a better shot at that time given its fall color leaves. But every time I walk along a certain area under the cliffs on the north side of Yosemite Valley I check in here to see what the light is doing.

During the first weekend of May I was in the Valley for photography and to visit the reception for Michael Frye’s exhibit at the Ansel Adams Galley. After spending an enjoyable hour and a half or so viewing Michael’s prints and meeting and talking with a wonderful group of photographers and photography enthusiasts at the Gallery I left to go wander a bit and make some photographs. When I came to this spot, clouds were starting to appear in the late afternoon sky above the Valley. This is a kind of ideal light since these conditions soften but don’t completely destroy the sunlight, and diffused light gets down into the forest and fills out the shadows.

I love the texture of these huge blocks of flat granite, covered with lichen. I like the visual quality of this rock, but I also like the physical quality of it; this probably dates back to a time some years ago when I was a rock climber for a few years. So while the tree seems like the main subject here, the rock surface is for me just as important.

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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.