Conifers And Scrub Aspens. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Conifers among small autumn aspen trees, eastern Sierra Nevada.

This should be my final Sierra Nevada photograph that I’ll share in 2019… but expect more in the coming year! I’m using the term “scrub aspen” to refer to these small trees, even though it isn’t widely used. When we think of autumn aspen trees the taller and often straighter trees come to mind. But in the Sierra these trees come in an amazing range of shapes and sizes. Although they are rare, you can find the same tall and straight trees that you might associate with groves in places like Colorado, but trees that are more twisted are more common here. Many are not that large, and in some rocky areas they may be no taller than you are.

These smaller “scrub aspens” growing on rocky slopes frequently seem to be among the first to change colors in the fall. In fact, these were already fully covered in colorful leaves even though it was just a few days into October. (I generally regard the peak of Sierra aspen color as coming around the second week of the month.) I photographed this scene late in the day, when the sun had dropped behind the peaks of the Sierra crest, leaving this valley in shadow.

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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Beaver Pond, Autumn Aspens. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

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.