https://www.michelleraneejohnson.com/

Michelle Ranee Johnson Photography, Yosemite Village, CA (2026)

07/23/2026

“The sun ignites the clouds below it as if they, and the water, itself, were on fire.” —Anthony T. Hincks.

Louis T. Wright (aka Mr. Harlem Hospital) has an incredible number of accomplishments that I’m just going to list as they are numerous:

-First black doctor to be put on the staff of a NY hospital
-First black surgeon in the police dept. of NYC
-First to experiment with Aureomycin (antibiotic) on human patients
-First black surgeon to be admitted into the American College of Surgeons
-First black doctor to be the head of a public in*******al hospital in America
-Published ~100 papers
-Pushed for racial equality in medicine
-Chairman of the NAACP for ~2 decades.

Wright’s journey began in La Grange, GA, on July 23, 1891. His father, Ceah Ketchan Wright, a formerly enslaved person, defied all odds to become the valedictorian of his medical school. Tragically, he passed away shortly after Louis’s birth. His mother, Lula, married a second time to William Fletcher Penn, the first African-American graduate of Yale School of Medicine.

Louis, following in his family’s footsteps, graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1915. He married Corinne Cook, and their two daughters, Jane and Barbara, also became physicians and researchers.

After medical school, he joined the Army Medical Corps, served as a Lieutenant and Captain in WWI, introduced intradermal vaccination for smallpox, and was awarded the Purple Heart after a gas attack (which caused him to have a lifelong respiratory illness). After the army, he set up a practice in Harlem, NY. He opposed segregated hospitals and worked on equality in medicine and medical education. He won the Spingarn Medal in 1940. His research in antibiotics, cancer, chemotherapy, head injuries, and bone fractures has helped us reach where we are today. The Harlem Hospital was renamed after him just before his passing. The Cinemax TV drama, “The Knick,” is the inspiration for the character named Algernon Edwards. Louis passed away at the age of 61 on October 8, 1952.

Sources and photo info in comment ⬇️

07/21/2026

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” — Ernest Hemingway.

One of my favorite author’s birthdays is today: ! He was born in Illinois on July 21, 1899, and passed away at age 61 in Idaho on July 2, 1961. He was a novelist, journalist, and short-story writer. You may recognize his name from some of his famous works like The Old Man and The Sea, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and others. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He was seriously wounded during WWI when he was an ambulance driver there. His novel A Farewell to Arms was based on some of his experiences then. After marrying his first wife (Hadley Richardson - he ended up being married 4 times), he moved to Paris to work for the Toronto Star as a foreign correspondent. He worked alongside Allied troops during WWII and was a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He led an adventurous life and was seriously injured (again) in 2 different plane accidents on successive days on his 1954 trip to Africa. These accidents left him in much pain for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, many believe it contributed to his passing (which I’m not going to fully get into as I don’t want to trigger anyone).

There is much more to his life, but I will leave you with some quotes:

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”

“Courage is grace under pressure.”

“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry: Worry never fixes anything.”

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

“The best way is to always stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel, you will never be stuck.” - Advice he gave on how to write novels.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway and https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/use-hemingway-trick-to-supercharge-your-morning-productivity.html

Photo info in comment ⬇️

07/20/2026

“The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.” ― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony .

Today has two topics:

1. Happy !!! Today is the day Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969! I believe everyone knows his famous quote from that day: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

What is your favorite aspect of the moon? What does the moon symbolize to you?

2. It is also the birthday of Leonidas Berry, a great pioneer in endoscopy and gastroscopy. He was born in North Carolina on July 20, 1902, and passed away at the age of 93 on December 4, 1995. He served as the President of the National Medical Association (NMA) from 1965 to 1966. He primarily worked in Chicago at Cook County Hospital, where he served as the Chief of Endoscopy and a senior attending physician. Did you know he was a descendant of a self-liberated African who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War? He also invented the Eder-Berry biopsy gastroscope (which allows doctors to collect stomach tissue without surgery. He also discovered that alcoholism damaged the liver (previously thought it damaged the stomach). He was also the first African American to present a paper to the American Medical Association (AMA). He started the Council for Biomedical Careers in 1950. He worked in the civil rights movement and developed the “Berry Plan,” establishing counseling clinics throughout Chicago for prevention and follow-up care for drug users.
Awards: 1977: Rudolph Schindler Award, Distinguished Service Award from the NMA, First Annual Clinical Achievement Award from the American College of Gastroenterology, Freedom Award for Public Service from the Chicago NAACP, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Rush Medical College.

Sources & photo info in comment ⬇️

07/19/2026

“In every race, in every nation, and in every clime in every period of history there is always an eager-eyed group of youthful patriots who seriously set themselves to right the wrongs done to their race or nation or . . . art or self-expression.” - Alice Dunbar Nelson.

On July 19, 1875, a fantastic poet, political activist, and journalist was born in New Orleans. Her name was Alice Dunbar Nelson. She was among the first-generation African Americans born free in the South of the United States after the Civil War. She was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She began participating in activities that empowered black women at a young age. She believed racial equality would come from military service, and she wrote several pieces encouraging young African-American men to join, including “Mine Eyes Have Seen” (1918) and “I Sit and Sew” (1918). Unfortunately, she passed away at age 60 in Philadelphia on September 18, 1935.

“Winter had stretched
Long chill fingers into the brown,
Streaming hair
Of fleeing October.” — Alice Dunbar Nelson.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dunbar_Nelson and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-moore-dunbar-nelson

Photo: “Fleeing October” - This photo was one of my favorite evenings last fall in ( ), looking toward the in November 2022. Nüümü, Nüümü Witü, and Newe Sogobia Ancestral Homeland. , NikonUSA.

07/17/2026

“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” — Berenice Abbott.

The renowned photographer Berenice Abbott was born in Ohio on July 17, 1898, and died in Maine on December 9, 1991, at age 93. She was best known for her portraits of 20th-century cultural figures, photographs of NYC architecture, urban design, & science interpretation later on in her photography. She believed in photographs being unmanipulated in subject matter & the developing process.

After completing some college, she went to Paris to study sculpture with Émile Bourdelle. While there, she became an assistant to Man Ray (despite having no prior knowledge of photography). Not only did she study sculpture and photography, but she also wrote poetry. While working with Man Ray, he was impressed with her darkroom work and allowed her to use his darkroom for her photographs. She had her first showing in Paris in 1921 and returned in 1927 to open a second studio. Some of her subjects were James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, and others. She also created a portrait of the photographer Eugene Atget before his passing, and helped compile his photographs to produce the book “The World of Atget” in 1964.

She returned to NY in September 1929. She went around NYC with her large-format camera. She worked on this large NY project independently for six years, unable to get financial support from various institutions. She supported her project by taking on commercial work and teaching at the New School of Social Research. Finally, the Federal Art Project hired her as a project supervisor for her NY project in 1935. With this support, she was able to employ assistants. With her project, she was able to photograph now-demolished buildings. She enjoyed taking photos of three urban life areas: the city’s diverse people, where they live, work, and play, as well as their daily activities.

More info, sources, and photo info in comment ⬇️

07/16/2026

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells.

The incredible educator, investigative journalist, & one of the early leaders of the civil rights movement was born July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her name was Ida Bell Wells-Barnett. She passed at 68 in Chicago on March 25, 1931. She was one of the founders of the NAACP.

She was born into slavery but was freed when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed during the Civil War. Her parents and baby brother passed during the 1878 Yellow Fever epidemic (when she was 16). So, she started work and kept her family together with the aid of her grandmother. She and several siblings moved to Memphis, where she became a teacher. Then, she co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, where she discussed inequality and racial segregation.

She began writing “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases” and “The Red Record” in the 1890s, where she documented cases of lynching in the United States. Unfortunately, a white mob destroyed her newspaper office after she exposed the horrors of lynching. This led her to move to Chicago, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, and they raised a family (6 children, including Alfreda Duster).

While raising her family, she advocated for equality in the civil rights, women’s rights, and suffrage movements.

Awards, Honors, & Autobiography: 1928: She wrote Crusade for Justice, but her daughter, Alfreda Barnett Duster, edited and published it in 1970. Her name has been established in the National Association of Black Journalists, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and the New York County Lawyers’ Association. 1988: Inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, Molefi Kete Asante was named one of the 100 Greatest African Americans in 2002. 2020: posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize special citation for her writings exposing the lynchings in America. And many more.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells and https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett.

Photo info in comment ⬇️

07/15/2026

“I was just one person, but I think of the thousands of people who have come after me and I would just like to think that their road might have been a little bit easier.” - Vivian Juanita Malone Jones.

Vivian Juanita Malone Jones was born on July 15, 1942, in Mobile, Alabama, and passed on October 13, 2005, in Atlanta, Georgia. She is famous for resisting then-Alabama Governor George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” - blocking her and James Hood when they went to enroll at the University of Alabama (an all-white university at the time).

She became one of the first two African American students (James Hood was the other) to enroll at the University of Alabama and the first African American graduate of the institution. The day after she enrolled, Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader, was shot and killed. She decided to keep pushing through her studies and not give up.

She moved to Washington and worked in the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, becoming director of Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and later serving as director of Environmental Justice at the EPA and as executive director of the Voter Education Project. In 1996, she won the Lurleen B. Wallace Award for courage, named after Governor Wallace’s wife, and was presented the award by Governor George Wallace himself. When he presented the award, he told her he had made a huge mistake 33 years earlier, that he greatly admired her, and that they discussed forgiveness.

Sources: https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2005/10/14/vivian-malone-jones-dies-at-63/27647720007/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Malone_Jones & https://kentakepage.com/vivian-malone-civil-rights-hero-who-defied-racial-segregation/.

Photo: “Stormy Tioga Pass Road” - One of my favorite roads is Highway 120 going over Tioga Pass. This is looking east coming down from the pass going towards the famous Mobil gas station (with amazing food). If you’re ever in the area, this is a must! Kootzaduka’a, Ahwahnechee, & Central Sierra Miwok Ancestral Homeland. September 2025. , NikonUSA. I used Artrooms | Art mockup app for artists to showcase my photograph on a wall.

07/14/2026

“Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.” ― Maia Kobabe.

Happy ! I have many wonderful friends and family members who are non-binary, and I love them dearly, so I want to send all of you my love today (and every day)! Today was first recognized in 2012 and chosen because it falls exactly between International Women’s Day and International Men’s Day.

How can we as a society be more inclusive? What pronouns do you go by (I’m she/her)? How will you be celebrating today?

Source: https://www.wsh.nhs.uk/Staff/Health-and-wellbeing/Calendar/LGBT/International-Non-Binary-Peoples-Day.aspx

Photo: “Moody Tis-sa-ack (Half Dome)” - While leading a small group on a photo walk for the Yosemite Climbing Association’s Yosemite Film Festival and Storyteller’s Summit this past June (2026) on a moody, cloudy day, which made the greens very deep, and we all loved seeing the deep greens. The next Yosemite Film Festival will be on April 1-4, 2027, so please keep a lookout when tickets go on sale! Ahwahnechee Ancestral Homeland. , NikonUSA, . I used Artrooms | Art mockup app for artists to showcase my photograph on a wall.

07/13/2026

“We have forgotten what rocks and plants still know - we have forgotten how to be - to be still - to be ourselves - to be where life is here and now.” — Eckhart Tolle.

Happy !!!! This is one of my favorite days because I have my Master’s in Geology (focused on volcanology); I love to climb rocks, take photos of rocks, and rock climbers. These experiences have shaped my love for rocks, so needless to say, ! Oh, and rock music is fantastic too!

What do you love most about rocks? Do you have a favorite type of rock? Say in a comment below!

Also, we are back to worrying about fighting for , as Canadian mining company Kore Mining is once again seeking to start a gold mine in the area. We all fought it once and won. But now they are back at it again. Can you imagine an open-pit gold mine that uses Cyanide to extract gold in this gorgeous area (as seen in the first photo)? Please reach out to NoHotCreekMine with more questions on how you can help fight this from happening.

Source: https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/international-rock-day/

Photos: 1. “Hot Creek Sunrise” - One of my Eastern Sierra places, at Sunrise, taken back in August 2023. This area is close to my main area of study, the Mono Craters (see next photo). Nüümü Ancestral Homeland.

2. “Here and Now” - A beautiful, cloudy afternoon at Death Valley National Park back in February 2024 at . Timbisha Shoshone & Newe Sogobia Ancestral Homeland.

3. “Waterfall of Light” - The beautiful pine trees on the Yosemite Valley floor meeting up at the base of back in May 2023. My friend surf_wave70 commented when I first shared this photo on Instagram that it looked like a , and I changed the name of my photo to that, as I loved it! Ahwahnechee Ancestral Homeland. Yosemite National Park

4. “Rocky Alabama Hills & Eastern Sierra” - February 2024, I took this photo while at the looking up at the . So many beautiful rocks there!

5. “Looking Down at Mono Lake” - I was fortunate to have hiked to the top of all but 3 of the 30(ish)

07/12/2026

“But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.” — Pablo Neruda.

Happy birthday to the amazing Pablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile, and passed on September 23, 1973, in Santiago, Chile. He was an excellent poet, diplomat, and senator who won the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. There is so much to this man’s life. I hope you look him up, as he was an incredible human, and I wish I had the time and space to go into more detail.

Here are some more amazing quotes by Neruda:

“Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.”
― Pablo Neruda.

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pablo-neruda

Photo: “Max and the Mono Craters” - My wonderful dog Max (Max) enjoying my old field area (the ) in September 2025. It was fun showing him around. Kootzaduka’a & Nüümü Ancestral Homeland. , NikonUSA, . I used Artrooms | Art mockup app for artists to showcase my photograph of Max on a wall.

Michelle Ranee Johnson Photography

07/23/2026

07/21/2026

07/20/2026

07/19/2026

07/17/2026

07/16/2026

07/15/2026

07/14/2026

07/13/2026

07/12/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category