Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary, Locations

What About Those Aspens?

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Aspen Leaves. Bishop Creek, California. October 1, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

For many of us who photograph California, an important question this time of year is “when and where will the aspens reach their peak?” There are many pockets of astonishing aspen color in the Sierra Nevada every fall, especially in the eastern Sierra. In my somewhat limited experience, the peak typically happens during the first week or two of October, although there can be variations brought on by climate, the passage of storms or a cold snap, along with elevation and specific location within the range.

So I start keeping my eyes open for the first signs of a change when I visit the Sierra as early as September. I was in Yosemite earlier this week, and while I didn’t spend a lot of time in areas where there are many aspen groves, I did pass by a few familiar groves along Tioga Pass Road. Not surprisingly, the aspens have not turned color yet. (Though quite a few other alpine plants are showing definite signs of the autumn change.) However, I did see the first hints in one grove where the veins in some of the leaves were just barely starting to pick up a lighter shade that presages the switch to shades of gold and red.

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A Note on Current Photographs

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Recently I posted a string of photographs from a recent trip to the Seattle area, some of which were different aesthetically and technically from what I usually do. I’ve pretty much gone through the images from that trip now, and over the next week or so you will see more photographs from my early August week-long backpacking trip in the southern Sierra Nevada.

My friends and I entered the back-country near Cottonwood Lakes from Horseshoe Meadow, crossed New Army and Crabtree passes to get into the Kern River basin west of Mt. Whitney, wandered up a section of the John Muir Trail, and then travelled east over Shepherd Pass to leave the Sierra.

Photographically, it was a tough trip, for a few reasons. Two weeks earlier I had backpacked into the Ansel Adams wilderness near the Minarets and Mounts Ritter and Banner, staying several days at Ediza Lake and then at Thousand Island Lake. On that trip, the conditions were ideal for mountain photography: beautiful clouds building to afternoon thundershowers, wildflowers still blooming, meadows green, and so forth. The southern Sierra trip was a whole different beast. First, the terrain was much higher and more austere – we often spent significant time at or above timberline. In addition, we travelled every day, often walking through very impressive and high terrain during the middle of the day – a hard time to photograph this kind of country – and ending up quite tired in the evenings. The extraordinary drought conditions in the southern Sierra this year also made certain areas a bit less photogenic than they might normally be, especially since the sky was completely cloudless during the whole trip.

So it goes. When conditions are wonderful – as they were on the earlier trip – I consider myself to be very lucky and I shoot as much as I can. When things are less conducive to photography, I still shoot quite a bit but I also may focus a bit more on the enjoyment of the trip itself.

In any case, watch for some photographs from this true high Sierra trip over the next few days.

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Backpacking Report: Crossing New Army Pass

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I’ve posted another installment of this summer’s backpacking trip reports over at my dan’s outside web site: Crossing New Army Pass.

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“Spare The Air” Day in the San Francisco Bay Area and Photography

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Yesterday and today were declared “Spare the Air” days in the San Francisco Bay area. There is a silver lining behind this gray (brown?) cloud, especially for Bay Area photographers with some time on their hands – like me, since I’m a college faculty member who doesn’t return to classes until late September.

On Spare the Air days, almost all Bay Area rapid transit systems offer free passes. (A few, like BART, Caltrains, and ferrys do charge after 1:00, but others are free all day.)

It is no secret that the challenges of photographing in San Francisco and surrounding areas include a) getting there, and b) parking! Spare the Air Day neatly solves both issues.

Since I live in the South Bay Area and like to shoot on foot in the city, my plan went something like this. Up at 4:45 a.m., I caught a bus near my house that took me to a Caltrain station in time to catch a very early “Mini Bullet Train” that gets to San Francisco in about an hour. I was off the train and walking toward The Embarcadero a few minutes after 7:00 a.m. (Another “silver lining” – on typical hot Spare the Air days there is shirt-sleeve weather even in the early morning in San Francisco.) There is a lot to photograph on the walk between here and the Ferry Building, and it took me a good hour and a half to finally make it to espresso at the Frog Hollow Farms shop. In the past, I’ve gotten on one of the free-today ferries to Sausalito or elsewhere, but today I decided to wander up into San Francisco and do some photography on the street. A bit after 10:30 and I was back at the Caltrain station, ready to catch a train back home.

A couple notes. I’ll post a few photos here in the next week or two – but go here if you just can’t wait. And, yes, I managed to completely avoid driving yesterday and I hope to do so again today – though today I’ll be taking a bus to the college to work on moving my office…

OK, one photo:

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San Francisco Bay Bridge. San Francisco, California. July 29, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.