Backpacking Photography Season Once Again!

Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin
Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin

Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

It seems like a good time to once again share my Backpacking Photography Equipment post, since summer is nearly upon us, and many of you will soon be joining me to head into the back-country to make photographs. Some of you  are trying to figure out the best balances of gear, weight, bulk, and complexity for doing photography on the trail using the trial and error (trail and error? trail of terror?) approach. Few years back I thought it might be helpful to share “my own backpacking equipment” list along with some ideas about how to select and use it.

The article is here: My Backpacking Photographing Equipment.

Enjoy! And see you on the trail!

A little more about the photograph included in this post… The two backpackers are my long-time “trail buddies,” Owen and Caroline, with whom I’ve spent many weeks on the trail in the High Sierra. On this trip we visited a lonely and less-visited area in the Upper Kern River drainage. The night before we had camped in a place where it was almost possible to convince oneself that no one else had been there before – a truly rare and cherished Sierra experience. The next morning we descended a drainage that passed through beautiful rock-garden meadows filled with tumbling streams. As the two of them crossed this meadow I quickly dropped my pack and made a couple of handheld shots.

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.

4 thoughts on “Backpacking Photography Season Once Again!”

  1. Dan, thanks for all of your posts. Sometime in the past you mentioned your favorite campground east of Tioga Pass on the road down toward Mono Lake. Since there are many, would you mind mentioning the best choice for mid-week camping this next week? (Consider above all aesthetics and quiet).
    Is there a chance of a site up in T. meadows? Best bet? In my Berkeley years I always backpacked, so I have little familiarity with these areas. But now living on the central coast I will be up there a lot.
    Thanks much,
    Karl DeLong

    1. Karl, the definition of best can vary quite a bit for me depending up what I’m up to and even on the season. If I want to shoot in and around Tuolumne and I don’t want to drive more than necessary, the T-Meadows campground is fine. Even without a reservation I can usually get a spot by arriving in the middle of the day on a weekday other than Friday, and early and late in the season it is often surprisingly easy to get a spot. If I want to be in the park and can’t get a spot a T-Meadow, I have also camped at Porcupine Flat. It is not a bad little campground – it is less “improved” (e.g – fancy pit toilets) but it is quieter and slower and less expensive.

      Once you get east of the park there are an awful lot of choices. I have camped in that area right past/behind the Tioga Pass Resort, but in the very late season when few other people were about. If my shooting plans are more general, not totally tied to T-Meadows, and perhaps include some stuff on the east side, I frequently camp down in Lee Vining Canyon. There are several forest service campgrounds there, though I somehow usually end up at the Aspen Campground.

      To qualify some of my campground “recommendations,” as a photographer my needs probably don’t quite match up with those of more typical campers. I’m usually up and gone before sunrise, returning perhaps at 11:00 or noon when almost everyone else is gone. Then I hang out for a few hours before fixing “dinner” at perhaps 3:00 or 4:00 before disappearing again… at about the time that everyone else is coming back to camp to fix their dinner! I generally come back to came again well after dark. Sometimes I wonder what the other campers must think of this mystery camper in the space next to theirs!

      Dan

      Hope that gives you are few ideas to get started!

      Dan

    1. David, interesting way to phrase it – but you are exactly right. It is a complete change from the lifestyle that most of us, including me, follow in our daily lives. Time moves slowly, we do what we want or need to do, we sometimes don’t keep track of the time or even the day of the week, we sit and ponder (or take a nap!), we wander about in a seemingly aimless fashion that turns out to not be aimless at all. :-)

      Dan

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