Category Archives: Photographs: Sierra Nevada

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

Aspens, Early Evening

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Aspens, Early Evening
Early evening light slants across eastern Sierra Nevada foothills and aspen groves beneath snow-covered peaks

Aspens, Early Evening. October 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early evening light slants across eastern Sierra Nevada foothills and aspen groves beneath snow-covered peaks

I made my first Sierra Nevada autumn aspen trip earlier this week. (This wasn’t my first aspen hunt of the season, though — a week ago I went into Eastern Nevada to look for them, too.) I just had a couple of days this time, though I’ll be back there again before too long. I did a rather high-mileage trip for such a short visit. On Tuesday I traveled east from the Bay Area to cross the crest at Carson Pass. I headed south over Monitor Pass to get to US 395, and then I headed south to find a campsite in Bishop Canyon. It was an “interesting” weather day — I drove through light snow flurries on the upper portion of US 395, though it cleared once I got south of Mammoth Lakes. Aspen conditions? In short, color is changing in many places, though had only peaked in a very few, so there is plenty of color left to come.

People often ask, “Where is the best place to find aspen color?” (You may have heard — I wrote a book on the subject!) I think that the best answer is perhaps not to name one or another place but to consider how aspen color evolves each fall and the many potential places to look for it. A short answer is that you can head over just about any trans-Sierra pass from highway 80 south and keep your eyes peeled! In general, things tend to move from north to south and from high to low, so keep that in mind as you look. But right now, if you cross any of these passes and take a cruise up and down US 395, all you really need to do is keep your eyes open and be prepared to do a bit of investigating… and you are almost certain to be rewarded.

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Meadow, Wildflowers, Granite Peaks

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Meadow, Wildflowers, Granite Peaks
A view of wildflowers leads across a meadow and lake toward High Sierra peaks

Meadow, Wildflowers, Granite Peaks. John Muir Wilderness, California. September 2, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A view of wildflowers leads across a meadow and lake toward High Sierra peaks

Taking a little break from the Great Basin National Park photographs today, I’m sharing another from our late August and early September backcountry time in the John Muir Wilderness. To recap, we spent essentially nine days base-camped in one spectacular location, from which we could easily explore outwards in all directions — to the meadows surrounding the lake below our camp, further down the drainage where marshy areas were lush and green, a few hundred feet higher where a spectacular meadow full of flowers provided views of alpine peaks, and further up the canyon where we could want cross-country past the timber-line. All in all, it was the kind of location and circumstances that produce a landscape photographer’s paradise.

Near the conclusion of our visit, as happens on any such trip, I was realizing that I still had not gotten to certain obvious subjects. In my case, I hadn’t really spent as much time as I should have in the area right below our camp, where these green meadows wrapped around a small, subalpine lake. So on the first two days of September I focused on exploring this nearby area a bit more. The precise spot in this photograph was one I had first walked through a week before, on the day I completed the (slow!) hike up to this lake. I had walked up this meadow on a faint trail, not really knowing where our camp was and a bit concerned about finding it. Nonetheless, the intense green of the meadow (unusual for so late in the season) and the abundant wildflowers immediately caught my attention. There were many kinds of flowers in the meadow, but here you can see the beautiful paintbrush blossoms, and then the meadow holding the little lake, a bit of forest, and in the distance the high peaks across the canyon from us.

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Meadow, Peaks, and Storm

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Meadow, Peaks, and Storm
A storm gathers above an alpine meadow and beyond snow-capped peaks

Meadow, Peaks, and Storm. John Muir Wilderness, California. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A storm gathers above an alpine meadow and beyond snow-capped peaks

Not too long ago I posted another photograph made on this same afternoon, from roughly the same place, and featuring very similar subject. In that post I noted that I had made several photographs of this subject on this afternoon, and that I planned to share all of them eventually, perhaps with a bit of commentary concerning how each represented this subject in its own way. The general setting was a large, subalpine meadow surrounded by mountains and forest, and with expansive views across a nearby canyon to the high, rocky country on the far side. A large afternoon thunderstorm was building beyond the high ridge, but meanwhile the sun was bright at my locations. The primary elements of the scene included meadow, mountains, dark clouds, the small pond or tarn, and the nearby trees. There are many ways to “see” a subject photographically, and I tried several variations with this one.

I wanted to include the pond in the portion of the meadow in the photograph, but in this interpretation I decide not to put it in the center of the frame, but instead to have it off to the side, perhaps giving it a bit less presence in the scene. I wanted to include the small foreground trees to increase the sense of depth in the image and to ensure that there wasn’t empty space in the foreground. I framed the mountains this way so that I could place the dark peak in the middle, and envelop it in the higher peaks stretching back behind it. A remaining question was about how much sky in include. In another interpretation I included a lot of sky, placing the horizon near the center of the frame. Here I did what I more typically do, placing the horizon very high and including only a small strip of sky at the top. This draws attention to the landscape itself, and I was still able to include enough sky to make the dark thunder-storm clouds visible.

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Clearing Evening Clouds

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Clearing Evening Clouds
The moon above clearing evening clouds over the John Muir Wilderness

Clearing Evening Clouds. John Muir Wilderness, California. August 28, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The moon above clearing evening clouds over the John Muir Wilderness

We covered a lot of ground on this afternoon and evening, and this was almost the last photograph I made on this day. Earlier we had climbed above the forest surrounding the lake where we were camped, emerging into a big, open meadow with expansive views in all directions. From here we took off, individually and in small groups, to explore higher areas, walking cross-country over the glaciated granite landscape to ascend ridges and reach various lakes. I noticed that the sun was about to pass behind mountains to the west, so I descended back into the valley I had come from and worked my way back down the course of the creek that drained it.

Before long we were back in the alpine meadow areas where we had started, and I found a high spot with an open view and started making a few final photographs as sunset came to the highest peaks and the clouds thinned as they passed in front of the moon. Since the light wasn’t going to last much longer, we pushed on to the main meadow, stopped for a couple of final photographs of alpenglow on peaks across the valley, and then continued on down through forest, arriving back in camp at twilight.

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.