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

Morning, Ellery Lake

March 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on Ellery Lake and surrounding mountains near Tioga Pass.

Yosemite National Park visitors who enter or leave the park via the Tioga Pass Road route are familiar with the sub-alpine lakes just east of the pass including Tioga Lake, Ellery Lake, and many smaller ponds. Ellery Lake – which is made a bit higher by a dam on its outlet stream – is the last lake before the drop-off into Lee Vining Canyon, and a place that people often stop during the summer months. Even during the very early and late season it is a popular place – in the early season right after the road opens you can often see back-country skiers on the steep slopes above the lake.

I rarely pass this particular cove near the upper end of the lake without stopping. However, I have also found it a tricky photographic subject! Very early light is blocked by the very tall ridge whose lower slopes are seen in the distance in this photograph. It is often quite windy. Late in the day the color of the light can be special, but it also tends to be almost directly behind the photographer and to leave some deep foreground shadows. There are other places like this – they seem like they should be photographic “slam dunks,” but they turn out to be more difficult than they appear. Or maybe it is just me! :-)

In any case, on this late June morning I had earlier finished photographing in the Mono Lake area and was heading back up towards Tuolumne Meadows. And, as always, as I drove around the curve above this cove I caught a view of the lake out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t resist stopping.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Two Sandhill Cranes, Winter Sky

March 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Black and white photograph of two sandhill cranes taking to the air against a cloud-filled winter sky above the Merced National Wildlife Reserve.

This is another photograph from my detour to the Merced National Wildlife Reserve as I returned from my February trip to Death Valley. I arrived late in the day as a winter storm was just beginning to clear, and at times the migratory birds flew in front of a cloud-filled sky that ranged from dark and ominous to being colorfully lit by sunset light.

I chose to render this photograph in black and white for several reasons. First, to be quite honest, I wasn’t very fond of the particular coloration of the clouds behind these birds! However, in black and white the shapes and glowing quality of the sky seem to work better in this case. And from this distance the sandhill cranes’ coloration is subtle enough that I don’t feel that much is lost by going to monochrome.

I think I have mentioned earlier that when I photograph birds like these in flight I try to keep my eye not only on the birds but also on the background. I don’t have any control at all over what appears behind them, but I do have control over when I press the shutter – and as they pass in front of clouds and other background elements I try to time shots to place the birds in interesting compositions relative to these subjects. Every so often I like to think that I actually succeed! :-)

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Purple Dawn, Mono Lake

March 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pastel shades of purple and blue just before dawn at Mono Lake.

Back at the end of 2010 I wrote that I was going through all of my 2010 raw files to look for images that I had passed over, as I do near the end of every year. Things got busy, I got distracted, and I only got about half way through the year’s files. Recently I have returned to the 2010 photographs to try to complete the task, and this is one of the photographs that I rediscovered as I resumed the search with images taken near the end of June.

This was my first real photographic trip to the Sierra during the summer season of 2010. I had made a brief trip up there, visiting Yosemite Valley and then crossing Tioga Pass, back in early June right about the time that the pass opened. However, on this trip I was able to spend several days in the high country and kicking around near Mono Lake. This can be a great time of the year up there since conditions range from what seems like late winter in the high country to real summer in places like Owens Valley and around Mono Lake.

On this morning I decided that I’d head down to Mono Lake well before dawn and see what I could turn up. I did not go to the iconic South Tufa area on this morning, thinking instead that I’d try for some different and longer views of the lake. (Later in the morning I traveled a good distance south of the lake on the less-used section of highway 120.) There were, obviously, clouds in the morning and they blocked the sunrise. However, the light glowed through and over and under and around them, and even though there was not direct light in very early morning image, the colors were quite something. The group of tufa towers at the lower left are offshore not far from the South Tufa area.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Saltgrass and Water from a Salt Spring

March 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This is another image from my productive half hour or so on the edge of the Death Valley salt flats near a salt spring on a cloudy February morning. These shallow pools obviously have the potential to reflect light and shape from the clouds and the surrounding terrain, and their narrow winding channels provide a relief to the otherwise relatively uniform terrain of the flats.

This photograph includes just a bit of the plant (which I believe is a type of saltgrass) that grows in the hostile and alien terrain at the source of the salt spring on the edge of this sun-blasted salt flat. Aside from places like Antarctica or the very highest alpine peaks, I’m hard pressed to think of other places that are less conducive to life. Yet, even here some small creatures are found in the water and these grasses somehow manage to survive. (And a short distance up the wash above the salt flat, new plants were beginning to sprout among the stones.) The grasses not only grow in very salty water, but many of them – including some at the lower left in this image – are encrusted in the dry salt.

Dealing with the extremely large difference in distance between the foreground mud, water, and plants at my feet and the distant mountain range and sky was tricky. The fact that a relatively long 50mm focal length was required for the composition I saw made it even more difficult – a shorter focal length would have given me much more depth of field. This would have been the perfect place to use a tilt/shift lens… but I don’t have one! Instead I resorted to a technique that can work very effectively when you shoot digitally, namely “focus bracketing.” Once I composed the shot I made three exposures, with each focused at a different distance from the camera. In the end it turned out that two covered it pretty well, with one focused on the mud/water/plants at my feet and the other focused on a much more distant point. In the post-processing stage in Photoshop I carefully aligned the two images (necessary since they shift with the different focus settings) and then used a mask to blend the sharpest portions of the two shots.

The jury is still out on whether this is better than using tilt/shift lenses or just a different alternative. With a tilt/shift I could have captured the scene in a single exposure that would have been sharp throughout the frame, making the post-processing technique unnecessary. However, in addition to having to carry another expensive prime lens I would have had to spend considerably more time setting up the shot… and the conditions out here were not exactly static!

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Monthly Archives: March 2011

Morning, Ellery Lake

Saltgrass and Water from a Salt Spring

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.