I have a habit of doing some one-day photo trips that impress some people as being, well, totally nuts. Example: At the end of September I did a long one-day trip over Carson and Monitor Passes, south on highway 395, up a bunch of gravel side roads, finally ending up at Lee Vining for a cup of coffee and some over-priced gas before turning around and retracing my steps. (See Anatomy of an Aspen Blitz at my other web site.) I started at 3:30 a.m., travelled well over 600 miles, shot several hundred frames, and finally arrived home at 11:45 p.m. – and then spent a couple of hours doing initial work on the images.
I’ve been outdone. Jim Goldstein also did a recent one-day excursion to the eastern Sierra, about which he writes:
On the road at 1 AM and not stopping until 11 PM…
1:00 a.m.! There’s not enough coffee in the whole central valley! :-)
Read more about his experience in a post at his web site.
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.
I had started this early October morning by photographing the first light at Sabrina Lake. After I finished up there – still quite early – I decided to head on over to North Lake, even though I was pretty certain that I had missed the best aspen color display this year. (North Lake is renowned for a “tree tunnel” as you arrive at the lake and for a huge aspen grove that rises up a gully on the far side of the lake.)
Sure enough, almost all the aspens had lost their leaves, and the few remaining were almost all brown and black. So I turned to a different landscape subject – snow-dusted Piute Crags with the shoreline of North Lake in the foreground.
On my second aspen hunting weekend this fall I again drove over Monitor Pass during the late morning hours, having shot the Carson Pass/Hope Valley area earlier in the morning. There were several inches of snow beneath this aspen grove close to the summit of the pass.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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