Aspen Leaves at North Lake. Sierra Nevada, California. October 5, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Colorful autumn aspen leaves at North Lake, California.
After being snowed on at North Lake the previous morning, I returned again on this day and concentrated on photographing aspen leaves, branches, and trunks in a grove along the side of the lake and near the famous “tree tunnel” that so many have photographed here.
To add one point… while I love the color and light of the large aspen groves and love to photograph their astonishing colors as well, I think I have come to prefer photographing the smaller details of these groves: a few leaves, some branches, perhaps against a background containing some rocks or trees that have lost their leaves.
keywords: colorful, fall, autumn, foliage, leaves, aspen, grove, forest, red, orange, yellow, gold, trunk, branch, north, lake, califoria, usa, bishop, creek, nature, stock, sierra, nevada, range, mountains
Ahhhh Sunday. I had somewhat of a personal emergency arise Saturday night so I rode home Sunday. Saturday it varied from “rip your head off howling” to just “windy” pretty much every place we went.
Thanks, Michael. A strategy I sometimes use when shooting in a place like this and a subject like this is to first go for the obvious stuff – here that was groves of colorful trees along the lake with beautiful mountains in the background – and to then slow down and look for smaller things that often turn out to be more interesting. So, once I had finished with the stuff I came to North Lake to shoot – yes, the obvious stuff – I wandered off into this grove and just started looking around carefully for things that were not quite as big and obvious.
You are right to ask about the wind! The previous morning (Saturday) it was very windy, indeed. This would have been a very, very difficult shot. Sometimes I can still get shots of leaves and similar subjects in the wind by increasing ISO a bit (I don’t worry at all about shooting at 200 and I’ll go to 400 if necessary) for a faster shutter speed, and by being very patient. Sometimes I’ll set up a shot and spend 10, 15, 20 minutes standing there and waiting for a brief moment when everything stops (or almost stops) moving long enough to get the shot.
But in this shot it actually wasn’t a big problem. I shot this one when I returned to North Lake the next day (Sunday) and the wind wasn’t nearly as bad. In addition, this grove is somewhat sheltered.
Congratulations on the new monitor!
Dan
Wow Dan I like this one a lot. It somehow sums up the aspen experience in a very delicate way.
Where did you find leaves that weren’t moving?
Sure looks good on my new monitor (Dell 2408WFP).