Bare Aspen Grove. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A grove of small and nearly bare autumn aspen trees.
We went to this location on a very early morning during the first half of October, a morning whose cold temperatures reminded us in the clearest terms that summer had now passed. I selected the spot for a couple of reasons: it can provide a beautiful long view of a section of the Sierra Nevada crest at dawn and there are aspens in the non-Sierra location. As the sun came up we discovered that wildfire smoke and clouds to the east would make this dawn less than the most spectacular we had seen. The sun also revealed that most of the aspens here had already lost their colorful leaves, despite the relatively early date.
If you are out there photographing enough you’ll find that the days of stupendously beautiful conditions are counterbalanced by other days that are less spectacular. (The good news is that if you are out often enough you will find the former enough to excuse the latter!) This was, at least in terms of what I originally had in mind to photograph, a morning that didn’t provide what I had hoped for. Yet, in many such situations, a look around and will frequently reveal something else, sometimes unexpected, that may make a worthy photograph. Immediately below our position on small ridge the aspen forest descended a small valley, and as I looked more closely at the nearly-leafless trees I feel that the groves of stark, bare trunks might be a good subject.
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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