Tag Archives: light

Fin Dome, Storm Clouds

Fin Dome, Storm Clouds
Fin Dome, Storm Clouds

Fin Dome, Storm Clouds. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 14, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Last rays of sunset light illuminate the fractured summit of Fin Dome and the Sierra crest on a stormy late-summer evening

During a week of beautiful days in the King Canyon National Park High Sierra back-country, this may have been one of the most compelling. The day began with interesting clouds and light, eventually evolved into light showers mixed with sun shine, and as sunset approached it cleared enough to give us rainbows, dramatically dark storm clouds, and golden hour light on the surrounding upper peaks.

This dome is a familiar landmark for many who pass along a section of the John Muir Trail not far from where we photographing, though that familiar view shows the opposite side of this feature. Although I was very close to it during the many days we spent photographing here, the face of the dome was often no all that photogenic. During the day the flat light did not complement it, and it is difficult to see how to compose an effective image of the thing from very close and right below it. However, on this evening we had wandered off to another location not far away, where there were many lakes and ponds, beautiful small meadows and granite formations, and more expansive views of the surrounding landscape. Shortly after we arrived there it began to sprinkle on us and we could see heavier showers distributed around the wider terrain. As sunset approached, the clouds thinned a bit over our position and the sun began to occasionally slant in from the west below the clouds, casting light beams that traversed the landscape to our east. I missed a few moments of beautiful light on this dome before I finally realized that this was a situation likely to repeat itself – and I stopped and waited for the next illumination from the west to arrive, here contrasting the warm sunlight on the peak with the darker storm clouds further to the east.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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 | FacebookGoogle+ | 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.

Unnamed Lake, Early Morning

Unnamed Lake, Early Morning
Unnamed Lake, Early Morning

Unnamed Lake, Early Morning. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 14, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light and cloud-filled sky reflected in the surface of an unnamed sub-alpine lake in the southern Sierra Nevada range, Kings Canyon National Park

This may have been the morning with the most dramatic light during our mid-September trip to photograph in the High Sierra back-country of Kings Canyon National Park, when a group of four photographs spent 6 nights in a beautiful 11,000′ location not far to the west of the crest of the range. Our camp was on a small rise just above my camera position, and we spent out days either looking at variations on essentially this view or wandering about in the alpine “neighborhood,” exploring and making photographs.

I have some experience with Sierra weather and I can often make some decent judgments about what is going on and where things may be headed. However, during this “shoulder season” when the transition from summer to fall and towards winter is taking place, all bets are off! During the summer, when it isn’t just another blue sky day in the Sierra, a common pattern starts with fairly clear weather, introduces a few small clouds by mid or late morning, and then builds toward possible thunderstorms and afternoon/evening showers. But this morning began with overcast that was distinctly un-thunderstorm-like, the sort of thing that I find almost impossible to read. Were we seeing some evidence of a larger pattern related to the onset of winter-season Pacific fronts? Was it merely a local weather situation that would dissipate as the day wore on? In the end, we did end up with showers late in the afternoon – as we did on over half of the days on this trip – but on this morning the only thing I knew for certain was that the light on the peaks below the cloud-dotted sky was exceptionally beautiful.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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 | FacebookGoogle+ | 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.

Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light

Lake, Trees, and Granite - Afternoon Light
Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light

Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 15, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon light slants across a Sierra Nevada landscape of water, trees, and ascending granite ridges

This lake, and the rocky meadows and forest and other small lakes and ponds surrounding it quickly became one of our favorite locations to photograph during our mid-September time photographing in the Sierra Nevada range of eastern Kings Canyon National Park. This spot was a very short ten minute hike away from our camp site, and it drew us back many times over the course of our six night stay – morning and evening, fair weather and stormy. The location was so varied and detailed that there was no end of things to see and photograph.

On this day several of us headed over there in the late afternoon, and once we arrived we headed off in various directions to find photographs. By this point we were clued in to the evening pattern of light, one that suddenly and a bit unexpectedly “turned out the lights” a bit earlier than we might have expected, with the shadow of a large ridge to the west quickly sweeping from north to south across the lake. We figured out that we had to start earlier than we might typically start for evening shooting, and that we then had to watch the change carefully so as to be ready for it when it happened. By the time I made this photograph, the wind had come up and what had been smooth waters began to take on a different appearance as the wind created some surface waves. A bit of haze accentuates the difference in distance between the closest trees and the more distant trees leading up the base of the rockier slopes.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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 | FacebookGoogle+ | 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.

Receding Ridges, Afternoon Rain

Receding Ridges, Afternoon Rain
Receding Ridges, Afternoon Rain

Receding Ridges, Afternoon Rain. Olympic National Park, Washington. August 16, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A passing afternoon rain shower mutes the details of Olympic Mountain ridges, Olympic National Park

I made this photograph on the same afternoon and evening as several of the other Olympic National Park photographs that I have posted recently. We went up to Hurricane Ridge in the late afternoon in hopes of photographing evening light across the valleys and mountains visible from that overlook, and we were partially rewarded. The conditions varied from moment to moment – occasional sun broke through clouds, atmospheric haze thickened and thinned, there were brief rain shows and a rainbow.

When we arrived the conditions were such that we imagined that they could evolve in any of several directions. We hoped for the possibility that the clouds to the west might break and allow light through. We worried that these clouds might thicken and cut off the late light entirely. When rain showers moved across the scene in front of us and dripped a few showers our way we thought that rain might develop. (We did get our light, but only briefly, and not for this photograph.) I made this photograph during that time when rain seemed like a distinct possibility. A semi-transparent curtain of showers gradually appeared over the valleys and range to our south, obscuring the details of the scene.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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 | FacebookGoogle+ | 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.