A reader noticed that my recent Death Valley photographs were made with two different systems — a Canon full frame system and a Fujifilm APS-C system. Apparently some people DO look at the EXIF data! ;-)
He wrote:
“Hi Dan, I’ve been enjoying your recent posts and comps from your Jan visit to DV. After visiting your flickr site, I noticed that you use a Canon 5DSR with 100-400 telephoto lens for its reach across the terrain, and a Fuji XT-5 with a medium telephoto for the more intimate canyon shots. Is that your set up for convenience depending on the scene? I’m guessing the 5DSR is tripod mounted for shots, and the Fuji is handheld when hiking. I’m curious why you don’t pair the Canon with the same focal lens that you use on the Fuji. Thanks for your insights.“
For example, this photograph was made with the little Fujifilm XT5 rather than with my much larger Canon system. If you are interested in my answer, read on!
“Light in the Canyon” — Afternoon light strikes a hill in the lower reaches of a Death Valley canyon.
With his permission, I’m going to write a bit about why I use two systems, and how and when I use both of them together.
Two oak trees, on opposite sides of a dormant meadow, with hazy winter light.
If you recall another recent oak tree photograph I shared, you might recognize the form of the more distant tree on the right. In that previous photograph my camera position put the sun almost directly behind the tree, thus accentuating the day’s atmospheric haze. For this photograph I moved to a spot from which I could include two trees and highlight the mass of the tree on the left along with its shadow.
I know I’ll be thrilled in a few months when this meadow is again full of tall, green grasses. (And given our recent — and welcome! — California rain, there’s a good chance that the grass will be tall this spring!) But I also love this early winter time, when the air is cool to cold, the trees have lost their leaves, and the meadows have gone dormant.
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.
After recommendations from friends, this week I finally began to read ” The High Sierra: A Love Story,” by Kim Stanley Robinson. I’m only a few chapters in as I write this, but already the book stirs up a lot of memories and thoughts about decades in the Sierra. Both of the trips he describes in the first few chapters take me right back to important places I’ve been. In fact, his transforming first trip literally took him to where I went on my similar trip a few years earlier.
The liner notes state that Robinson was “transformed” after he “first ventured into the Sierra Nevada mountains (sic) during the summer of 1973.” That got me thinking about my introduction to these mountains — and also about other people who know this range deeply and in different ways after decades of experience in the range.
My first backpack trip was, of course, in the Sierra, way back in the summer of 1968. I was 16 and — to my retrospective amazement — our parents dropped me and two of my buddies of the same age off at a trailhead. We hiked over Rockbound Pass into what is now part of the Desolation Wilderness for a trip that was, to the best of my memory, five days long. I had dreamed of such a trip for what seemed to my young mind like forever, and I still recall the magical first view of someone’s backpacking campsite at a lake just beyond the pass. (We managed to get semi-lost on the last day, but that’s a story for another time.)
But wait, that was not my first visit to the Sierra. My father, a transplanted New Yorker by way of the Midwest, aspired to backpack in the Sierra, though I don’t think he was ever quite up to it. I recall that he picked up bits and pieces of gear for the trail, and I now think he was responding to the same fascinations that I developed in my youth, though he never quite managed to get “out there” in the backcountry.
A few years before that crossing of Rockbound Pass with my buddies, he tried to take me and one of my brothers on a pack trip. My memory is now incomplete, but I think that we rented a “mountain tent,” backpacks and sleeping bags, and who knows what else. We got as far as the Tuolumne Meadows campground, but then — if I’m not merging multiple memories — we had “weather” and retreated to the wood-stove-equipped tents at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge. Truthfully, that was pretty magical, too.
But that wasn’t my first Sierra experience either. Though we weren’t really a camping family — I think my mother actually hated it, but went along — we car-camped at places ranging from Lassen NP to Sequoia NP.
But the first real Sierra trip I (vaguely) remember was to Yosemite Valley. I’d love to share a stirring tale of seeing the Valley for the first time, but if it happened I don’t remember. I do remember being awed by the raging Merced River behind our (now gone) motel in El Portal, and I recall the rituals of the Yosemite Firefall, the feeling of looking into the great valley from Glacier Point (the old lodge still stood!), and a fearful moment of being chased back into the family van by a black bear.
But the first memory of the Sierra? This comes from our family’s first experience in the state, and may actually have been a stop on the drive from Minnesota to California when my parents moved here in 1956. We stopped at Lake Tahoe, and I distinctly recall a view the lake from an area along its shoreline. Later I saw an area — perhaps it was El Dorado Beach? — that sure seems to fit my memory, though the memories of four-year-olds are not to be fully trusted. Today it is not a magical place, but in my memory it surely was.
On a trip into the backcountry with friends this past summer, we passed — OK, we were passed by! — groups of young backpackers. I recognized the younger me in them, and I thought about people like the current me that I had encountered on the trail when I was their age. (I guess that makes me an old man of the mountains now!) I thought about the experience being young and encountering the Sierra as a new place, a blank slate for making unimaginable memories, with no idea of where this might lead. And I thought about what it means to be at the far end of that adventure, now full of accumulated experiences, memories, and stories. And I wondered if I could possibly explain to them the potential of the journey that they might be starting and how deeply it might affect them. (I resisted the temptation to actually stop them on the trail and try to explain, you’ll be happy to hear, as will my own kids! ;-) )
So, these mountains have been part of my life for a long time. And I’m not the only one. If you look around, there’s a good chance that someone you encounter was also “transformed” by a long experience with this remarkable Range of Light.
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.
It is that time of year again — my favorite season! This past week on walks here in the San Francisco Bay Are I have noticed the signs of the seasonal change. The sun is setting an hour earlier, our first (early!) Pacific weather front is arriving this weekend, some trees are starting to change colors, and the sound of old leaves skittering along the ground in the breeze is everywhere.
Wildfire smoke drifts over the Sierra Nevada crest above a lake surrounded by autumn aspens. @ Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
Fall color is more prevalent here in California than many realize. The earliest hints come to the high country of the Sierra Nevada in late August, when something in the air changes, corn lily plants turn yellow, the bilberry starts to pick up a bit of red, and you might even find an odd yellow aspen leaf here and there. Things pick up as we progress through September, and by the very end of the month it is often possible to start finding a few examples of good aspen color up high. Then the color works its way down to lower country, the valleys, and the coast over the following months. I’ve sometimes photographed “fall color” in the Central Valley as late as… January!
The main aspen color season in the Sierra peaks during the first half of October. It tends to start at higher elevations as early as the very end of September, becoming quite pronounced early in October, and working down to lower elevations into the third week of the month. If you can only go once, targeting your visit for about one week into the month is a good plan.
No one knows for sure how the season will evolve. Some things stay relatively constant from year to year, while others vary quite a bit based on temperature fluctuations, the amount of precipitation that fell during the year, whether or not early storms sweep through, and more.
I share annual updates on my Sierra Nevada Fall Color page at this website. I just posted this years first message there today — it is mostly some early thinking about how the season may evolve, along with a record of what has happened in some previous seasons. The latter may be useful as you plan your autumn color search in California.
One more thing: I may have something new to write about regarding fall color in a few weeks. Stay tuned…
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.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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