Yellow And Orange Grove. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Autumn aspen grove in yellow and orange, Eastern Sierra Nevada.
Autumn is a great time to be a photographer in California. Yesterday I was in the Central Valley to photograph sandhill cranes and geese (mostly Canada geese, with a few others mixed in here and there), and almost exactly one month ago I was in the Sierra Nevada photographing fall aspen groves. That color has now worked its way to the west side of the range and is currently expanding into the lowlands closer to the coast. (OK, I won’t get into the issue with wildfire smoke. For now…)
I made this photograph very late in the day, in an Eastern Sierra Nevada canyon where the tall peaks of the crest brought the area into shadow well before actual sunset. I had arrived in time for the last backlight of the day on these trees, then sticking around long enough to photograph them in the soft, shadowed light. (I continued to follow that line of shadow back down the canyon to the east after photographing here.) The leaning trees are most likely the result of an active beaver population in this canyon, and the gnawed trunks nearby are evidence of their busywork.
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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