Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow

October 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Time to share aspen photos again! Each fall when the aspens change colors I head to the eastern Sierra to go aspen hunting! I made my first foray of the season this past weekend. I visited a number of the usual places – Bishop Creek, McGee Creek, Rock Creek, and Lee Vining Canyon. I’ve come to think that every aspen color season has a personality, defined by how and when and with what intensity the color appears, along with the related issues of the changing weather.

This year I think (from what I’ve heard) that the higher elevation trees were just changing colors about a week ago… before a strong early season storm came across the Sierra, dropping temperatures and quite a bit of snow. Over the weekend I saw up to about one foot of snow in places, which is an unusual amount for so early in the season. The aspen color was not exactly astonishing, and I think that the weather may be at least partially to blame. It seems that many of the mature colorful leaves were knocked down by the storm, and others that might now be colorful instead turned black and brown. While there was some interesting color, in many places I saw trees with leaves missing or trees that were almost fully still green.

The good news to take away from this is that since the lower elevation trees are still very green, there should be some fine aspen color very soon.

But I’ve often thought that a single leaf can be enough to make a photograph, and sometimes the single leaf can make a more effective image than a huge, colorful grove spanning many acres. So when I find that the color isn’t what I expected, one response is simply to look harder. As I walked along the road that passes North Lake, many of the subjects that I might have expected to photograph were nowhere to be seen. There were not large, spectacularly colorful trees. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground. So I looked harder… and one of the subjects I noticed was this single, small branch full of intensely colorful leaves lying on the snow.

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns

October 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A bed of ferns grows at a trail junction under deep redwood forest cover at Muir Woods National Monument.

This photograph was made in the late winter of 2009, during that time of the year when the redwood forest is still very wet and cool, but when flowers are blooming and spring is clearly on the way. The location is along the very popular (and often quite busy) main trail along the creek through the central part of the park. No doubt I had to wait a bit for the combination of these beams of light and no other visitors on the trail!

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Dew on Lupine and Grasses

October 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dew from morning fog collects on meadow grasses and lupine flowers, Santa Cruz Mountains.

It is a wonder that I even consider this photograph worth posting. (Hope I’m not wrong about this!) I made this photograph six years ago when I was doing my very first investigation of digital SLR shooting after having been a film photographer (at least apart from some earlier more or less point and shoot stuff) for many years. To “test the waters” I had picked up a very inexpensive and modest Canon “Digital Rebel” XT DSLR and a single zoom lens. The camera actually wasn’t a bad performer at all. While these models were small and lightweight and lacked some features of their more expensive brethren, they had essentially the same sensors and for those who shoot the way I generally did the other features were mostly superfluous. The first DSLR-sourced print I ever sold came from this camera. The lens was another story. For my “test” I simply picked up a reasonably inexpensive wide range 17-85mm variable aperture lens. This lens has its pluses and minuses (read more here), but for me the minuses were eventually deal-breakers. However, this little handheld photograph was made with that very modest lens, and as long as I don’t try to make it too big I think it works fine.

The scene is a typical one in the oak and grassland areas of Central California that surround the area where I live. This particular scene was at Castle Rock State Park, in the Santa Cruz Mountains between Silicon Valley and the coast. At this time of year the weather can evolve in any of several directions, including rain, fog, brilliant sun and heat, and more – but on this day I was shooting in very damp coastal fog along the top of the ridges.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sunset, Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon

October 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon storm clouds clear from the sunset sky above Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon, Yosemite National Park.

With this photograph I get to tell another of the “serendipitous photograph” stories that seem to keep coming up in my work. In this case, we had been camped near the lake in the lower area of the photograph for several days, getting to know the place and having time to carefully photograph various areas nearby. On a previous evening we had climbed to a second lake a few hundred feet higher than the “main” lake, from which one of our group decided to traverse a nearby slope. He ended up at another alpine lake that looked interesting, and the next morning others went with him to visit it. I didn’t, because I had some other things that I wanted to photograph in morning light and because I had a hunch that the light might turn out to be more interesting in the evening, mainly because the area of the lake was open to the west and, therefore, the evening light.

So in the evening, after our typical very early dinner, I departed on a walk to the upper lake that my friends had visited that morning, wandering around “our” lake and through the surrounding forest to pick up a rocky ramp that ascended toward the lake. However, I apparently missed a turn somewhere. I finished the main part of the climb and apparently should have turned left immediately – but I continued on straight ahead and soon found myself in a little meadowy area with a rather steep bunch of rocks between me and my goal. I finally found a circuitous route up a series of ramps, but now it was getting too close to sunset and my turn-around time, so I had to retrace my steps without getting to the lake.

I returned to the small meadow and made a few photographs there, then headed back toward the route by which I had ascended. Despite not making the lake, one of my main goals had been to get up high to photograph the surrounding terrain at sunset, especially since earlier in the day large thunderclouds had been building to the east and creating the possibility of some very special evening light. As I descended the upper part of the “ramp,” the pre-sunset colors started to light up and I quickly found a spot with a good vantage point to view this in several directions. Among the last photographs I made as the light started to fade was the series including this image. (It is actually a composite of two exposures – one for the very bright and saturated clouds and another for the darker shadows down near that lake.) Beyond the lake is the left end of rocky Shepherds Crest and even further in the distance is Virginia Canyon and then the Sierra crest.

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