Category Archives: Photographs: Fall

Photographs of fall color

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature

Autumn Pond, Tree

Image December 29, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn colors on a small tree in a wetlands pond.

Central Valley landscapes such as this one often cause me to stop and consider what this area was once like. Today it is mostly agricultural land, marked of into neat squares with water coming from extensive irrigation systems, cut through by roads and highways connecting the increasingly populous cities of the area. But not much more than 100 years ago it was a very different place. One reminder for me is a description that John Muir wrote in the 1800s, remarking on vast fields of wildflowers that he saw as he walked (!) to the Yosemite Sierra. Historically, many parts of the Valley were also quite wet places, with marshy lowlands fed by many rivers and creeks draining from the mountains. (Much of this water is now captured, channelled, and devoted to agriculture.)

Fortunately, some remnants of the old marshlands (and even the original grassland prairie) have been protected. Many of the marshlands were protected, as I understand it, as part of the wildlife refuge program. One of the reasons for this is that hunters did not want to see all of the waterfowl disappear. Recently I read that there is yet another practical benefit to these places — birds that stay in them are less likely to feed on winter crops! In any case, these places now help protect remaining migratory bird populations… and they provide beautiful reflections for landscape photographers!

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature

Three Trees, Fog

Image December 27, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three trees on a foggy Central Valley late-autumn morning.

This group of trees, and especially the central one, have gradually become “old friends” of mine when I photograph in California’s Great Central Valley each winter. (If you photograph frequently in a favorite location, I’ll bet that you have some similar personal favorites!) Every time I pass by here, coming around a particular curve in the road, I spot the first tree and begin considering how it relates visually to the elements behind it, primarily including the other two “mirror image” trees.

The conditions in the photograph are fairly typical of late-autumn up and down this great valley, which stretches hundreds of miles from the southern end (where roads lead over mountains to the LA Basin) to the north (where Mount Shasta looms). When the conditions are right (or “wrong” if you live out there and it is the thirtieth day of them!) the damp air is very still and tule fog forms. This fog is dense but not deep — you might not be able to see more than a hundred feet in front of you but you can look up and see the sun or stars. The fog completely transforms this landscape, eliminating the sense of grand space and scale and instead producing a sense of intimacy and mystery.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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

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

Beaver Pond, Autumn Aspens

Image December 10, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A beaver lodge in an eastern Sierra Nevada pond reflecting autumn aspen trees.

As the end of 2019 approaches… I’m still working my way though photographs from much earlier this year. That is actually typical for my work process. I tend to “work over” images in phases. I often start immediately with some images that jump out at me, frequently photographs that seemed like highlights at the time I made them. Then I dig a bit more deeply into the collection, and photographs that weren’t quite so central in my memory and those that take a bit more work appear. Over the following weeks or months I continue to dig into the archive, and I often find things that I missed earlier. (I’m near the end of this phase with the end-of-summer and early autumn work.) Beyond that I usually do a year-end review of the past year’s work, and periodically I go through even older files.

This photograph comes from a familiar location that I have visited many times over the year, an eastern Sierra canyon where active beavers (are rarity in the Sierra) have transformed the landscape by knocking down trees and damning the stream to flood a valley with shallow ponds. Although I’ve go to this place every year, this autumn was the first time I’ve actually paused to photograph one of the beaver dens.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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

Aspen Grove, Late Afternoon

Image December 6, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon light on an Eastern Sierra Nevada autumn aspen grove,

Later in the Sierra Nevada aspen color transition many of the groves in this area had already lost their leaves — as you can see if you look towards the more distant trees. But the foreground trees were in that wonderful stage where there are still plenty of colorful leaves, yet enough of them have fallen to more clearly reveal the white aspen trunks. The late-afternoon side light, coming in low over the nearby Sierra crest, helped to make the leaves glow, too.

As I work my way toward the end of this year’s eastern Sierra fall color photography I’m thinking back on the nature of this season. Although the general contours of the color transition are often rather similar from year to year (aside from some of our recent extreme drought years) there are fascinating differences, too. Late in the summer this year I saw a lot of very healthy-looking aspen, probably as a result of two very good water years. That led me to expect that we the colors might be more spectacular than usual. In the end, there was plenty of wonderful color, and I managed to find it in some new-to-me locations… but the transition was unusual and overall not the most spectacular I have seen. It seemed to start a bit early and, to my surprise, in more places than usual I found trees that dropped leaves early. This grove is an example — in a more typical year most of the trees would likely have been in peak color when I made this photograph. No matter… one of the beauties of autumn aspen trees is that there are so many ways to photograph them, and if you don’t get vast groves of wild colors you may find another kind of beauty.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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