Autumn Aspens, Cliff. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Autumn aspen trees cling to ledges along the face of a cliff in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
The aspens in this photograph have fascinated me for years. Nearby are some relatively large, tall, and straight trees, but for the most part the trees in this scene are small, slender, and sometimes even a bit misshapen. They manage to eke out a living on what appears to be solid rock as they send their roots into narrow cracks.
These trees seem to have, at least in my experience, a fairly short period of maximum color. Or at least that is what I tell myself when looking to explain why I have somehow almost always missed their best color. But it also appears that they change colors earlier than some of the other trees in the area — I made this photograph just past the middle of September, nearly two weeks before the typical start of the more widespread fall color season in the Sierra.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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