Fall Aspen Leaves, Sierra Nevada. Bishop Creek, California. October 2, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Aspen leaves at their peak of red, orange, and gold color in the North Lake area of the Sierra Nevada, California.
More wild aspen colors… On this morning I went to the infamous North Lake – infamous for the ridiculous crowds of photographers who flock to the lower end of the lake to make the same photograph of the surface of the lake, the colorful trees at the far end, a band of aspens ascending a hillside, and the taller peaks beyond. A year or two I had my first encounter with the throng when I arrived at this lake, not knowing about this business, and found perhaps 20 photographers in a row near the outlet stream. This year I knew what was coming when I arrived at the lake, but I was still somewhat shocked to see that the horde was now up to perhaps 60 or more photographers packed tripod to tripod along the banks of the lake at the outlet, and now also extending along the far side of the lake as well.
Fortunately, I had no intention of shooting that scene. Instead, my plan was to park my car, pack up my gear, and walk slowly along the road past the lake looking for intimate photographs of small details of the autumn scene, especially where some smaller aspen trees grow right up agains a short, rocky cliff. So I spent perhaps an hour wandering along here, mostly by myself but with an occasional friendly encounter with other horde-avoiding photographers, until I reached a small parking area further up the lake by the other iconic subject at North Lake, the “tree tunnel.” I also did not plan to photograph this, but I did figure that I could find some very colorful leaves near here in the forest along the side of the road, and that is where I photographed this very colorful grouping of aspen leaves.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
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Very perceptive, Greg – one of the things I do when I look for close shots of aspen (or other) leaves is search very carefully for sets of leaves that not only are appealing in and of themselves, but which are roughly in a plane – they can’t be too far tilted away from the plane (unless I want a narrow DOF effect or use a very small aperture), and their distances from the lens must be very close to the same. On top of that, I have to pay a lot of attention to what lines up beyond the leaves. I might get a nice framing of the leaves with the leaves parallel to the sensor… only to find that something odd or distracting appears behind them.
In this shot I was very fortunate to not only – I think – get all of that to work, but each of the three main leaves on the left has a more distant “companion” leave that peeks out behind it. :-)
Dan
Dan – Nice detail shot of the aspen leaves. The 70-200mm is great here because the shallow depth of field blurs the background into a pleasing colorful pattern, and you’ve aligned the major plane of the subject parallel to the camera sensor plane thus getting all of the subject in focus. Good work!