Tag Archives: aspen

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

Inside the Grove

November 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Among the trees of an Eastern Sierra aspen grove, autumn

Late in the afternoon on this day of Eastern Sierra fall aspen color photography I found myself in a familiar place, where a small lateral road, narrow and gravel, roughly parallels are larger paved road. I like to pull off the main road here and slowly drive the short distance up canyon on the gravel road, stopping along the way to view and photograph the variety of aspen trees that grow here. It is especially nice late in the day when the sun drops behind high peaks, leaving soft, shadowed light.

I pulled into a familiar pull-out along this road, at a spot where I have photographed in the past and where there is a little grove of small trees. None of the trees seems to be as tall as twenty feet, but they grow very closely together — so closely that it is actually difficult to walk among them. The spot is often quiet — personal rather than iconic — especially late on an autumn day, and I sometimes simply pause quietly here for a while. On other occasions, like this one, I make photographs. I decided that I would put on a very wide-angle lens and then walk in among the trees, photographing them very close up and trying to capture some of the feeling of being inside such a dense little grove.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fall Foliage in Transition, Eastern Sierra

November 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fall color comes to cottonwood and aspen trees in McGee Canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada

This is a favorite east side Sierra Nevada canyon. Like so many of these canyons, it spills out into the Valley east of the sharp eastern front of the range, with evidence of ancient glaciation in the form of lateral moraines. It quickly twists and turns and rises toward the monumental peaks of the Sierra crest, quickly transitioning from essentially desert country to alpine terrain in a matter of a relatively few miles. This particular canyon doesn’t necessarily look like much from the valley, as its lower reaches are obscured by the moraine ridges near its base. But as soon as you cross those low hills and enter the main canyon, its steep walls and stupendous scale become obvious.

In the fall the lower canyon is full of cottonwood trees turning golden, while higher up the canyon aspens change color a bit earlier. Several years ago I backpacked into this canyon in September, the only time I’ve done so, and I passed through some of the earliest color I’ve seen in the Eastern Sierra. This was another early color year, largely as a result of California’s four-year drought. On this visit there was a bit of relief from the incessant heat and dryness as weather fronts passed through, and a bit of snow is visible along the higher faces.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Yellow Leaves, White Trunks

October 30, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few yellow leaves remain in a grove of small, tightly packed Eastern Sierra aspens

With this year’s unusual Eastern Sierra fall color transition, I had plenty of opportunities to photograph aspen groves with few or no leaves. Most likely as a result of the four-year California drought, some aspen trees seemed to be under a lot of stress. Some of these trees were bare very early in the season, others changed colors a week or more early, and other simply lost their leaves without a real color transition. (Fortunately, some trees were not as stressed, and these prolonged the color season to and beyond the usual time in mid to late October.)

I enjoy photographing dense groves of small trees, with their complex and packed patterns of trunks and leaves. I spotted this grove a day earlier while in the area, so late in the day when the light started to fade and I found myself nearby, I headed back this way to photograph the grove in fading light. I like photographing aspens in this light, as it fills in the shadows, avoids the stark shadows of midday light, and tends to saturate the colors naturally. I searched this grove for the right spot and finally found it here — a place with almost uniformly dense small trees and a band of strongly colored leaves running horizontally.

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

Leafless Aspen Grove

October 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sierra Nevada aspen grove with bare trunks

I’ve written before that this has been a very strange fall color season in the Eastern Sierra, and this photograph might be an example. Although the photograph was made very near the beginning of October, typically the time that the peak colors are arriving, this grove was one of many that were already completely devoid of autumn leaves. After spending some time in a very colorful area much further south along the eastern slopes of the Sierra, I decided to head back to the San Francisco Bay Area over a couple of passes that cross the range much further north. Near the top of one of these passes there is a vast open area that holds many large aspen groves, and I had hopes of photographing some color here late in the day.

I arrived to find a beautiful scene — high, open sagebrush country with clouds moving quickly across the landscape and creating changeable light. But the aspens were pretty much spent. I pulled off the main road at a place I know well, and took a short detour down a little gravel road toward the edge of groves where there are some very large trees. Here I found the trees, alright, but the leaves were gone. Fortunately, I like aspen groves in almost any condition — with bare branches, with new spring growth, with colorful autumn leaves, in snow — so I went to work photographing the dense patterns of closely spaced aspen trunks in the soft late-day light, muted even further by clouds.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: aspen

Inside the Grove

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Fall Foliage in Transition, Eastern Sierra

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Yellow Leaves, White Trunks

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Leafless Aspen Grove

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

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