Autumn Aspens, Brush, and Talus. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A row of colorful autumn aspen trees standing between alpine willows and talus, Eastern Sierra Nevada.
These trees grow in an area widely regarded as iconic for fall color photography in the Sierra Nevada, though if they appear in the usual photographs at all they are perhaps seen as a small element off to the side in the distance. However, they have intrigued me on their own for many years. Since the first time I visited this place I made a point of walking past and underneath them, and eventually I began to consider how they could be photographed from a slightly greater distance.
These trees constitute a segment of a thin line of trees that travels for some distance, thick and wide in some places and separated by breaks in others. In the best years — and this was one of those — they include all of the potential color shades from yellow through orange to red. But the other elements in this scene also are important to me — the bluish rocks of the hill in shadow, the subtler colors of the brush in the foreground flats, and the dark green of the widely-spaced conifers trying to gain a foothold in this meadowy area.
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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