Cottonwoods, Meadow, and Stumps. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 24, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Stumps of dead brush in a meadow with autumn cotton wood trees, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
We encountered these first autumn-foliage cottonwoods shortly after we entered this canyon, and this being our first day shooting in this area, I think we (or at least I) felt obligated to shoot every possible subject, since everything was so new on this day. Later I might have passed up these cottonwoods which, despite their brilliant color, were it a tricky spot to photograph and were just about to end up in the direct morning sunlight.
Trying to find some sort of composition that could include them but not make them the whole story, I first saw the brushy meadow with its light green grasses and older dry grass, but that was too featureless of a foreground for what I had in mind. Then I saw these old dead stumps of perhaps tamarisk or some other desert plant that were still standing in a section of this meadowy area, and I decide to use them to fill the foreground.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.
Dan,
We backpacked the Escalante last week of Sept/first week of Oct 2012, and they were actively removing Russian Olive and Tamarisk trees. Don’t know if these were among those the crews had targeted, but brought back some memories for me.
Sounds like you were there mere weeks before I came through. This was my first real visit to the Escalante River – though I had been through the surrounding area twice before – but I’m hooked now! When we came through, and perhaps even on the very day I made this photograph, the crew that had been removing the foreign vegetation had finished for the season and they were hiking out.
Dan