Aspen-Covered Hillside, Reflection. Sierra Nevada, California. October 2, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Brilliantly colorful aspens ascend a hillside valley above the reflecting surface of a Sierra Nevada lake.
This absurdly colorful hillside above a small lake is a well-known autumn sight in the eastern Sierra above Bishop, California. If you hit it at just the right time and in just the right light, the colors can be almost hallucinogenic. (I’ve heard it called the “Cheetos forest,” for reasons that are probably pretty obvious.)
I’ve been there plenty of times, but have never quite hit the right combination of conditions to get a good shot of the color. I came very close a few years ago, arriving in the pre-dawn hours when there was just enough light to make out the river of color snaking up the small valley above the aspen forest near the lakeshore – but before the sun came up a snow squall swept through. I cowered in my car for half hour to escape the wind, and when I was able to get out and start shooting…. half the leaves that had been there 30 minutes earlier were gone!
The good fortune this time was not just that I was there when the color was strong, but it was also a matter of light and weather conditions. The day started out overcast, and things were looking a bit dull. But soon the clouds began to break up to the east (to the right in the photo) and bright but soft light began to filter though and between the clouds as if someone had set up a giant light panel to the east. Instead of photographing the entire hillside, I decided to photograph the horizontal layers rising from the reflections in the surface of the water, through the shoreline grasses and bushes, past the yellow/orange/gold aspens, and up the slope to the brilliant orange colors above.
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I’ll mention one other thing that was probably important on this photograph: avoiding over-exposure! That might seem like an odd thing to say, but an exposure that meters as correct can produce a blown-out red channel when the subject is autumn colors. In many cases in is good to check all three histogram channels and make sure to avoid surprises in the red channel. This may make the initial exposure seem too dark, but you can compensate for this in post.
Dan
Dan- Wow, what color! That diffuse, overcast light is perfect for these colors.
Good question, Chris.
I usually “work” the scene rather than making just a single photograph or a small number. I explored several different compositions with this subject, including both vertical and horizontal versions and some that included the top of the ridge (that cannot be seen here) and some sky above. I even returned to the spot a bit later and made more photographs in brighter light. (Those “work,” but I like this softer and more diffused light in this one.)
I probably made a half dozen exposures of this particular composition as the light changed. The versions on either side of this one do not have the same luminous quality of light that occurred here as the combination of clouds and filtered light was at its best.
It took me a while to see this particular version of the scene. The first impression that one has when seeing the extraordinarily colorful hillside is to shoot that subject and to “take it all in.” It wasn’t until I had spent some time (and not just on this visit) contemplating this subject and looking at it from different perspectives that I saw a composition that emphasized the horizontal layers rather than just the vertical sweep of the foliage.
I shot several other compositions that are quite different from this same spot – with the camera pointing an entirely different direction. That is often another characteristic of how I may work. I once was shooting in a desert location with a friend who introduced me to the place. I spent perhaps an hour shooting within a 50 foot radius of the first place I shot… which my friend, who wanted me to see other things, had a hard time understanding! :-)
Dan
I’m curious about your process on this one Dan. Did you take a couple token photos of the entire hillside to get them “in the bag” and then move on to the subject you felt more confident about, or stick strictly to what interested you.