Submerged Boulders, Lake, and Cliffs
Submerged Boulders, Lake, and Cliffs. Sequoia National Park, California. August 6, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.
This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Sunlight illuminates submerged boulders near the cliff face of a lake along the High Sierra Trail - Sequioa National Park.
After shooting the "classic view" of this lake along the shoreline where near the outlet stream, I packed up and headed on up the trail toward a nearby pass. A moment later as the trail climbed above the lake I glanced back and saw that the sun was breaking through the clouds and intermittently illuminating the underwater talus at the end of the lake - so I dropped the pack, set up my equipment, and waited for the light. ("Waiting for the light" - perhaps that should be my motto!)
Since so many have commented/faved this photograph, I'll add a bit more background info. Some of you may know this lake as the location of a famous early Ansel Adams photograph - here is one link. The lake is up high on along a section of a well-known trans-Sierra route. After a long, steep climb from a nearby lake, you top a small saddle and find the lake - and the famous Adams view - directly in front of you.
The vantage point for this photograph is from a few switchbacks above the lake as the trail heads on up toward the pass. The Sierra is full of deep glacier-formed lakes like this one, and others include steep shoreline cliffs and talus fields that fall directly into the deep waters - but few that I've seen (in four decades of Sierra backpacking) combine these features in quite the way they are seen at this lake - special versions of each, and packed together in such a constrained space.
I know the colors of the submerged rocks and the water are almost unbelievable, but that is really what I saw on this morning. Clouds and the cliffs were shading the area to the upper right, and I saw sun occasionally breaking through as the clouds moved and illuminating, almost as if with a spotlight, the intensely colored water and submerged rocks.
(A big "thank you" to Charles Cramer (a.k.a. "Charlie") for some very important ideas about how to post-process this photograph for print.)
As Adams said, more or less, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.”
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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 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.
Submerged Boulders, Lake, and Cliffs
Submerged Boulders, Lake, and Cliffs. Sequoia National Park, California. August 6, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.
This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Sunlight illuminates submerged boulders near the cliff face of a lake along the High Sierra Trail - Sequioa National Park.
After shooting the "classic view" of this lake along the shoreline where near the outlet stream, I packed up and headed on up the trail toward a nearby pass. A moment later as the trail climbed above the lake I glanced back and saw that the sun was breaking through the clouds and intermittently illuminating the underwater talus at the end of the lake - so I dropped the pack, set up my equipment, and waited for the light. ("Waiting for the light" - perhaps that should be my motto!)
Since so many have commented/faved this photograph, I'll add a bit more background info. Some of you may know this lake as the location of a famous early Ansel Adams photograph - here is one link. The lake is up high on along a section of a well-known trans-Sierra route. After a long, steep climb from a nearby lake, you top a small saddle and find the lake - and the famous Adams view - directly in front of you.
The vantage point for this photograph is from a few switchbacks above the lake as the trail heads on up toward the pass. The Sierra is full of deep glacier-formed lakes like this one, and others include steep shoreline cliffs and talus fields that fall directly into the deep waters - but few that I've seen (in four decades of Sierra backpacking) combine these features in quite the way they are seen at this lake - special versions of each, and packed together in such a constrained space.
I know the colors of the submerged rocks and the water are almost unbelievable, but that is really what I saw on this morning. Clouds and the cliffs were shading the area to the upper right, and I saw sun occasionally breaking through as the clouds moved and illuminating, almost as if with a spotlight, the intensely colored water and submerged rocks.
(A big "thank you" to Charles Cramer (a.k.a. "Charlie") for some very important ideas about how to post-process this photograph for print.)
As Adams said, more or less, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.”
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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 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.