Sierra Meadow, Evening Light

Sierra Meadow, Evening Light
The Cathedral Range and the Dana Fork fork of the Tuolumne River

Sierra Meadow, Evening Light. Yosemite National Park, California. July 15, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Cathedral Range and the Dana Fork fork of the Tuolumne River

One of the great pleasures of the Sierra — and other places, for that matter — is “aimless wandering,” just heading out into a landscape with no specific goal in mind, but simply to move slowly and quietly and find what there is to see. This was an evening for such things, so I went to a familiar place a few hours before the end of the day and just walked off slowly into the landscape, meandering along the boundary between meadow and forest, stopping frequently to observe. Truth be told, I probably spent more time standing still than walking.

Perhaps 45 minutes before sunset I realized that some unusual “sky action” was about to take place above my location, and my meandering took on a clearer since of direction. I began to work my way back toward my starting point, a location from which I envisioned photographs of the sky and foreground landscape. But even this more purposeful walking was slow, and along the way I stopped to photograph this bend in the river, with a distant granite ridge above the meadow and forest.


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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