Category Archives: Photographs: Fall

Photographs of fall color

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

High Country Aspens

September 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of autumn aspens in front of receding conifer forest and rising slopes near Sonora Pass on a Sierra Nevada fall evening

Although I’ve driven across Sonora Pass for years, I feel that I have perhaps neglected its photographic potential, perhaps because it is somewhat out of the way for me on many of my Sierra trips — the major Tahoe area routes are farther north, and my favorite trans-Sierra route further south is Tioga Pass through Yosemite. I have photographs from the base of the pass on the east side, but my collection of photographs from the highest reaches of the pass is very small. With this in mind, I decided to return from this trip to the eastern Sierra by way of this pass, and I timed the traverse for the late afternoon when I thought the light might be idea.

Although this pass is not quite as high as Tioga Pass, it has a much more alpine feeling. The road is very steep in places and frequently quite narrow as it twists and turns up and down and around trees and boulders. I recall once thinking many years ago that driving this pass is about as close to the feeling of hiking the high country as one can get on a road. There are a lot of aspens along this route, but in many places they are mixed in with the conifer forest, making them a bit more difficult of a photographic subject. Finally, perhaps a couple miles east of the pass, the terrain opened up to high forests and meadows and I found a few beautiful aspen groves standing apart.

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

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

Sierra Fall Color — Late September 2015

September 27, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

I’ve just returned from my first trip of the season to photograph Sierra Nevada fall color, and I have a few impressions and observations to share.

Autumn Aspens, Eastern Sierra Gully — A “river” of aspen trees in autumn colors snakes its way up an eastern Sierra Nevada gully

In a typical year the peak of the Sierra Nevada aspen color generally occurs around the first two to three weeks of October, so I would not usually head up there to photograph the fall color in September. But this is not a typical year. After four years of historic drought conditions in the Sierra, the normal seasonal cycles seem to have been disrupted. With that in mind I felt it might be worthwhile to go a bit early this year, and my visit was rewarded with some excellent early color.

Some Speculation

Every season brings reports that “the color is coming early this year!” Eventually I figured out that this is quite often a matter of folks becoming overly exuberant when they see the first early signs of the color change, and that things tend to play out on roughly the same schedule almost every year. There are variations, but they are most often rather small.

This year I’m prepared to go (a little ways) out on a limb and say that things do seem to be different this time, though I’m a bit cautious about overdoing the extent of the difference. The photograph at the beginning of this article embodies features of the pattern that I believe I am seeing. Notice some trees without any leaves at all, some trees that already have intense color, and some trees that are still quite green.

Here is my sense of what is going on. Note that this is essentially personal speculation and guesswork based on what I see, and that I can’t guarantee that I’m right or that things will play out as I imagine they might. That said, I’m planning my own eastern Sierra aspen hunting around these assumptions until I see evidence to the contrary. Continue reading Sierra Fall Color — Late September 2015 →

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

Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

December 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Large cottonwood trees with autumn leaves along the Escalante River, Utah

In many places like this one along the Escalante, the terrain seems to be largely a continuous repetition of one horseshoe bend after another, and each bend encourages me to want to see what will be ahead. When the river bends one way, the bottom of the canyon may be in sunlight; when it bends the other – and perhaps narrows around the apex of the bend – everything may be in deep shadow from the tall cliffs above the narrow canyon. In these bends it is often necessary to cross back and forth across the stream as the canyon narrows. (That ritual was a new one to me as a long-time Sierra Nevada hiker and backpacker. There a stream crossing or two in a day would typically be about it, and we tend to make a big deal out of them. Here you might cross a stream more than a dozen times in less than a mile!)

The location of this photograph was at one of those crossing points. The trail approached my camera position from up the canyon and around the bend along the right (from this point of view) side of the stream, crossed the river down among the trees, and then headed across a low hill to the left that skirted between the river and the base of the cliffs. When I arrived at this point and walked underneath this wildly colorful group of cottonwoods, I thought I’d like to find a way to photograph them, the river, and the dark upper canyon. So, before wading through the water I went ahead a bit and climbed up on a sort of ledge to this overlook from which I had a good view up the canyon. Because it was a partly cloudy day, the light here was in a constant state of change. When the clouds moved overhead, the canyon and the trees become quite dark. But a moment later the cloud would pass on and the sun lit the golden trees so brightly that it was almost impossible to photograph them and keep any light in the background canyon. So I watched and waited and made this exposure when the clouds partially obscured the direct sun, but still let in enough light to brighten the trees and cast soft shadows on the bank of the stream.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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

Four Oak Trees, El Capitan Meadow

November 20, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Four black oak trees with early autumn foliage stand in late-afternoon light at El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley.

These four oak trees in El Capitan Meadow are almost iconic, having been photographed by many, many people. On this trip I stopped in El Capitan Meadow near the end of the day – this was my last major shooting location before leaving the Valley for the long trip back to the Bay Area. While there was considerably time left before sunset, because El Capitan Meadow sits to the east of some very tall cliffs, this photograph and others in the series were made just before the list direct light fell on the area. The fact that the areas closer to the cliff faces along the north side of the valley were already in shade helped set off the backlit leaves of the four trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Fall

High Country Aspens

Sierra Fall Color — Late September 2015

Escalante River, Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

Four Oak Trees, El Capitan Meadow

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.