Category Archives: Photographs: Fall

Photographs of fall color

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

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest

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Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest
Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Just for fun… a fall color photography in black and white! I have the greatest respect for our photographer predecessors who set about photographing the beauty of fall color with only monochromatic shades to work with. It can be done, but it isn’t quite as straightforward as photographing fall color with today’s capable digital cameras. It is all too easy to let those colorful leaves end up having monochromatic tones that aren’t that much different from the same trees in the green season! Light helps, as does some selective use of filters — glass filters in the old days and post-processing analogs applied to digital files today.

I made this photograph close to a rather popular fall color photography location, though the exact location isn’t quite in the usual spot. It presented a challenge or two that I won’t describe here. The light was, to use the old euphemism, “interesting” at this point. The late afternoon light was coming in at a low angle and lighting up the trees nicely, but the sky was a bit tricky. Some high clouds were floating over the Sierra crest peaks, and their brightness posed a dynamic range challenge while their shadows fell across the peaks. There are many things I like about this scene — the way the curving forms of the groves lead away and up toward the Sierra crest peak, the long shadows, the alternation of sunlit ridge and darker valleys, and those distant peaks with a bit of autumn snow dusting their summits.

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

Trees, Meadow, Autumn Light

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Trees, Meadow, Autumn Light
Hazy autumn light and trees in a Yosemite Valley meadow

Trees, Meadow, Autumn Light. Yosemite Valley, California. October 21, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hazy autumn light and trees in a Yosemite Valley meadow

Every autumn the Sierra Nevada experiences days when the air is full of wildfire smoke. It was only recently that I came to recognize that a large component of what I’ve always identified as “autumn light” is the atmospheric haze from wildfires — not just those nearby in the Sierra, but including the diffused smoke from wildfires further away in California and even beyond California’s borders. Yes, the lower angle light is part of the effect, but it is the soft and hazy atmosphere that is perhaps the most major element. I’m amazed that it took me this long to fully make the connection, but also happy to find there are still new things to “discover” and understand!

The atmospheric light in this photograph is the result of this effect. It was a very smoky day in Yosemite Valley — the sort of day when you might consider wearing a breathing mask. A big fire was still smoldering just south of Yosemite Valley, its smoke collecting each evening and then flowing downwards into the Valley. I made the photograph just as the edge of the shadow from nearby cliffs was beginning to cross this meadow, and the sunlight caused the smokey atmosphere to glow behind the trees. It is easy to think of wildfire smoke as an impediment to photography, but if you turn your thinking around just a bit you soon realize that these conditions can provide some very special and even lovely possibilities, ranging from the muted and slightly sienna tones of the light to enhanced effects of atmospheric recession. The potentials for producing moody and evocative photographs may actually increase on days like this!

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.
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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, Photographs: Yosemite

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

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Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn
Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn. Yosemite Valley, California. October 21, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

I’ll start with a story about crowds, but I’ll end on a better note. :-) I drove to Yosemite Valley on this late-October weekend partially to photograph early fall color in The Valley, but also so that I could attend an exhibit opening at Gallery Five in Oakhurst — where the final showing to the 2017 Yosemite Renaissance exhibit had been installed. I have visited the Valley for years at about this time, since fall colors there typically peak around the end of the month. On this trip, my first indication that I wouldn’t exactly be alone in the park — despite there being a lot of wildfire smoke — was the extraordinarily long line to enter the park, even very early in the morning. Further into the Valley I was stunned by the number of cars and visitors — it wouldn’t have been anything special during the summer, but near the end of October? I decided to head up to the Curry Village (sorry, “Half Dome Village”) area to park where I could wander off and make photographs, but when I arrived there was literally no place to park — not the Village lot, the overflow lot, the nearby roadways, or anything else all the way up to nearby campgrounds. I was floored…

I finally left that area and found a pull-out along the roadway, parked my car near some a portion of the forest filled with colorful big leaf maple and dogwood trees, and headed off into an area where there was virtually no one else around. Yes, there are such places here, even on busy days. As I walked I spotted a number of potential photographs, but I kept going, walking slowly until I finally reached the banks of the Merced River. I made a few photographs there in solitude before turning around and slowly starting back the way I had come. I now had in mind a few trees that I thought might make interesting photographs, so I paused and poked around near them looking for compositions. This photograph falls into a category that I think of as “order from chaos” compositions, in which there is an almost overwhelming amount of detail tied together (I hope!) by some underlying compositional order. Here the darker branches and trunks of trees supply that order underlying the complexity of the colorful big leaf maple leaves.

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.
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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, Photographs: Yosemite

Autumn Leaves, Yosemite

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Autumn Leaves, Yosemite
Fallen big leaf maple leaves along a Yosemite Valley trail

Autumn Leaves, Yosemite. Yosemite Valley, California. October 22, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fallen big leaf maple leaves along a Yosemite Valley trail

I suppose it would not truly be autumn without at least one photograph of fallen leaves littering the forest floor! I made this photograph on a walk along the south side of a quiet section of trail in Yosemite Valley where big leaf maple trees grow. Along with black oaks and dogwoods, these trees produce some of the most interesting fall colors in The Valley. The big leaf maples often grow among conifers and in autumn their brilliant yellow leaves contrast with the darker and more somber tones of the other forest trees.

Just before I made this photograph I had been looking for the actual trees, and trying to find some that were separated enough from their surroundings to stand out in a photograph. In this particular location that turned out to be difficult. There were some lovely big leaf maples, but the lighting was a challenge and they often were too interspersed with dense forest. At about that point I thought to look down, and I saw thick piles of the large leaves alongside the trail.

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 | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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