Category Archives: Photographs: Fall Color

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

The Edge Of The Grove

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The Edge Of The Grove
Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

The Edge Of The Grove. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

In a recent post I mentioned that I was almost done with fall color photographs for the year. Maybe. Sort of. But no promises. So here’s another one. This grove is a bit atypical for the Eastern Sierra, where we often see small groves of trees that are twisted and bent, and where continuous groves a tall, straight trees are the exception. I’m not certain why this is the case in “my” mountains, but I suspect it has to do with the rugged and often-rocky landscape, the relatively dry climate in parts of the range, and likely other factors. This grove on the eastern edge of the range abuts sagebrush high desert country, and perhaps the more open terrain allows the trees to get more light than they might receive in a deep valley.

This photograph differs from most that I share in that it is a re-working of a photograph that I shared a few years ago. A photograph is not necessary a finished thing, and a given version represents what and how the photographer saw the image at a particular point in time. We change and our way of seeing changes, and when we look back at earlier work it is common to reimagine how we might interpret the subject. Here the changes are mostly along the lines of “tuning up” the image a bit. There’s a slight tightening of the crop, some differences in how the colorful leaves appear, and some small changes to the foreground and the shadows.

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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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Color, Aspens and Brush

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Autumn Color, Aspens and Brush
Backlight on a high country brush and a small copse of aspens with fall colors.

Autumn Color, Aspens and Brush. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Backlight on a high country brush and a small copse of aspens with fall colors.

There is a good chance that I’m approaching the end of this season’s fall color photographs — though there are still at least a couple in the pipeline. Given that in prior years have managed to hunt down a few remaining examples of autumn leaves in early January, well, there could are more! Here on the West Coast, by starting high in the Sierra in September and continuing into the lowlands as fall ends and winter begins, it is possible to experience a “fall” color season that lasts up to four months!

This scene comes from a location where the color transition begins near the beginning of this period. It is in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, at close to 8000′ elevation, where the semi-arid high desert terrain rises to meet the eastern escarpment of the range. Years ago I did not pay much attention to this zone, preferring instead to head straight to the high country. More recently, at least in part as a result of my fall color photography, I have become fascinated by this region. It is a complex zone, and the boundaries are affected by water, exposure, elevation, and soil conditions. The foreground brush is more typical of the high desert, while we usually tend to think of aspens as belonging to the near-alpine high country.

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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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Color Layers

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Autumn Color Layers
Layers of autumn color from aspen groves ascending an eastern Sierra Nevada slope.

Autumn Color Layers. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Layers of autumn color from aspen groves ascending an eastern Sierra Nevada slope.

This is one of those “rediscovered” photographs that I had originally left behind a couple of years ago. I found it again during the last few months while doing a review of some older raw files. I originally made several exposures of this group of trees with autumn foliage in the eastern Sierra Nevada, and I initially went with something framed a bit differently and using the landscape (horizontal) format. But coming back to the set of images, I noticed that layered effect of these trees and thought it might be a worthy photograph, too.

This grove is somewhat characteristic of the sorts of aspen trees we find in the Sierra Nevada. As friends often remind me (usually after retiring from visits to these other places), in places like Colorado and Utah and similar locations you can find seemingly endless groves of tall, thick, and straight trees. That’s quite rare here in my state. It isn’t impossible to find large groves, nor is it impossible to find thick and tall trees — but that’s not the most common situation. Often the trees are smaller and with distinct “personalities” — which is another way of saying that they many be twisted in interesting ways rather than straight and tall. But in this grove, we get a bit of (almost) everything. Behind that first line of small trees, which are likely encroaching on the foreground meadow, there is a grove of tall aspens. Beyond that, as the slope becomes steeper and more rocky, the trees once again begin to have that… “personality.”

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Old Cottonwood and Red Rock Cliffs

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Old Cottonwood and Red Rock Cliffs
An old cottonwood tree, changing to fall colors, stands in front ot a red rock cliff face, Zion National Park.

Old Cottonwood and Red Rock Cliffs. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An old cottonwood tree, changing to fall colors, stands in front ot a red rock cliff face, Zion National Park.

There’s a very good chance that I’ve already said this too many times, but the color palette of the Utah red rock country is simply remarkable. The rocks themselves are astonishingly diverse, ranging from the reddish tones to whites, grays and blacks, and occasionally more exotic colors. The trees and plants, especially as the autumn color change begins, cover a range from grays through greens to yellow, orange, red, and brown. And all of this varies from the bluish tones of early morning and evening through the golden hour saturation and the midday intensity of light. I’ve said it before and I’ll likely repeat myself in the future, but to a Sierra Nevada photographer this can be almost overwhelming.

Early on our second morning in Zion National Park we took a drive that entered the park near Springdale just before dawn. We stopped several times as we began the ascent on the Mt. Carmel highway, first to photograph the intense dawn light and then, a bit later, to photograph this gnarly tree against the backdrop of a shaded canyon wall.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.