Aspens, High Desert Valley. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.
Autumn aspen trees line a creek through a high desert canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada.
Heading across the Sierra early in the third week of October, I wasn’t certain what kind of aspen color I would encounter. There’s always some color at this point in the season, but in many years it has been diminished by wind and passing early weather fronts. But it seemed that these influences were muted this year, and as I approached Sonora Pass I was encouraged by seeing much more color than I expected. I turned south after crossing the pass I headed south where the forests of the Eastern Sierra begins to meet the high desert sage country. As I passed this small valley — where I had not really paid attention to the color potential in the past — I caught a flash of bright color below. I quickly turned around and backtracked to locate a better camera position.
Getting just the right conditions for these trees that grow along shallow canyons like this one is tricky, especially on the eastern slopes of the Sierra. Typical daytime light is often quite harsh, though that diminishes a bit with autumn’s lowering sun angles. But this time I got lucky, and broken clouds created patterns of light and shadow on the sage-covered hills. I set up and waited for the light to show up in the right places, and eventually it lit up the trees in the Vally and produced alternating light and dark patterns in the hills and mountains beyond.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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Hello. I have been trying to get accepted onto the “Sierra Nevada Photography” face book. 3 of my photos have been sitting in Pending Review for a few weeks now. At one time I sent in 5 photos and filled out the questionnaire. A message read there were technical difficulties, but I think it’s back to working correctly. Can you advise if someone will be letting me know if I can join the group? I would appreciate it.
Thank you.
John:
I found your request to join that group and have approved it.
Since you went to the trouble to contact me directly, I perhaps owe you an explanation. It wasn’t anything about your request. It has to do with the combination of the huge (and I mean HUGE) number of requests that the group gets from spammy accounts now that Facebook changed their policy to automatically submit that name of anyone who tries to post anything to the group. Frankly, the small group of volunteer moderators has just been overwhelmed by the task.
We still try to separate the good from bad and add members every so often, but it has been a while since we’ve been able to do that.
In any case, you are in. Welcome to the group.
Dan