Tag Archives: america

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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Walls, Roofs, Orange Paint

October 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A section of brick wall above old roofs is painted bright orange, Chelsea, New York City.

This photograph was made from the High Line Elevated Park in morning light. If you like the textures and colors and machinery and forms of dense and old urban structures, there is a lot to see and photograph from the High Line. I made a photograph of the same under-construction area in the far right of this frame (not completely visible) a year ago, but that was at a very different time of the day. On this morning, the odd patch of bright orange paint on the brick wall (and the smaller bit around the door frame) got my attention, so I leaned as far as I could toward the edge of the walkway and made a photograph unobstructed by the guard rail.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Old Brick Building and Remnants of the High Line

October 8, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Remnants of the old right-of-way of the High Line Railway run in front of and old and run-down brick building, New York City.

There is, no doubt, a lot of history in this scene that I’m unaware of – but the visual elements mostly caught my attention as we walked past this spot. On the final morning of our August 2011 visit to New York, we were walking from West Village to Chelsea when we passed this area. My son, who lives in Brooklyn and is obsessed (in the good way!) with walking around lots of areas of New York City and making photographs and noting what he sees, first pointed out the terrace in the lower part of the scene (bounded by the railing) and the steel structure at the lower left. He told me that this was part of the High Line Railroad that used to run through this part of Manhattan. A more famous section of the High Line has become a very popular “elevated park” in Chelsea, but in this area it is pretty much just abandoned and, in places, gone.

I don’t know what the tall and worn-looking brick building is, but I’d sure like to know. My hunch, given the appearance of a former white paint job and the proximity to the railroad tracks, is that it must have been some sort of industrial building at some point.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building

October 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A double-reflection of late light from an adjacent building appears in the upper story of this window-covered industrial building near the High Line Park in New York City.

This is another of my photographs from New York City’s High Line Park, made during my late August visit to the city earlier this year. For those who may not know, the High Line is a relatively new (and still under construction) urban park in Chelsea that is “elevated,” being built on the bed of the old elevated railway that passed through here. The park is tremendously popular, especially on summer evenings.

Aside from being a pleasant place to walk, the High Line affords some interesting views that are usually not quite this accessible. There are not to many places where you can walk through a busy urban environment such as Manhattan for a mile or so, out in the open, a couple of stories above street level, with largely unobstructed views of subjects near and far, and above and below. Here the park passes between some taller buildings that are closely spaced, creating an interesting lighting situation. (Oddly, it is a kind of lighting that I often look for when shooting landscape or nature subjects.) The sun is behind the building in the photograph, so the building is largely lit by light from the open sky plus light reflected from the building behind my camera position. You can see that other building in the windows here, the upper floors in direct sun light and the lower in shadow.

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