Early Aspen Color. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Early autumn season aspens begin to change color.
As fall approaches I always anticipate the color change of aspen trees way in advance of the actual event, and I start watching for early signs more than a month before the color peaks. Way back in August I typically find a few early clues — yellowing corn lilies, drying meadows — and at some point in September I find my first few yellow aspen leaves. The change begins in earnest by the first week of October, and that is when I made this photograph. At this point, the aspen trees seem to move toward a sort of “lime green” color, often with a few interspersed yellow leaves, and in the right light you can convince yourself the fall colors have arrived.
There is a useful lesson about lighting in this photograph, too. Although this scene seems pretty straightforward, there’s more going on with the direction and color of the light than you might first notice. This grove of trees is, indeed, in the shade. The camera is pointing roughly east, a tall ridge rises behind this little grove, and it was still shading the trees hours after sunrise. This provides soft light that fills in shadow details much better than direct sunlight. Look deeper into the grove and beyond and you may notice that the color becomes more blue. Light in shadows is usually quite blue — after all, the main light source is the very blue sky! But the trees in the foreground are not very blue… and there’s a reason. Behind my camera position (if we could turn around and look backwards) was a very large mountain in direct sunlight, and the reflection of that light was strongly diffused and directed straight into the grove, warming the colors and highlighting the front trees.
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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