Tag Archives: aspen

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

High Country Aspens

September 28, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of autumn aspens in front of receding conifer forest and rising slopes near Sonora Pass on a Sierra Nevada fall evening

Although I’ve driven across Sonora Pass for years, I feel that I have perhaps neglected its photographic potential, perhaps because it is somewhat out of the way for me on many of my Sierra trips — the major Tahoe area routes are farther north, and my favorite trans-Sierra route further south is Tioga Pass through Yosemite. I have photographs from the base of the pass on the east side, but my collection of photographs from the highest reaches of the pass is very small. With this in mind, I decided to return from this trip to the eastern Sierra by way of this pass, and I timed the traverse for the late afternoon when I thought the light might be idea.

Although this pass is not quite as high as Tioga Pass, it has a much more alpine feeling. The road is very steep in places and frequently quite narrow as it twists and turns up and down and around trees and boulders. I recall once thinking many years ago that driving this pass is about as close to the feeling of hiking the high country as one can get on a road. There are a lot of aspens along this route, but in many places they are mixed in with the conifer forest, making them a bit more difficult of a photographic subject. Finally, perhaps a couple miles east of the pass, the terrain opened up to high forests and meadows and I found a few beautiful aspen groves standing apart.

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Locations, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Color is Right Around the Corner

August 25, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

It is still summer here in the San Francisco Bay Area — but something changed this past week, and it is clear that summer is on the decline now. Autumn, my favorite season, arrives in a matter of a few more weeks.

We have had some very hot weather here in the West, but this week things were different. Although the smoke of western wildfires is still adding haze to our air, the edge is off of the heat here. One morning the furnace actually kicked on for a few minutes before I woke up and shut it off. About a week ago sunset was earlier than 8:00 PM for the first time in months and the rate at which daylight hours shortens continues to accelerate. Over the weekend we walked to a nearby store to get ice cream in the evening, and we wished we had brought jackets. (As a long time California resident, I’m not completely fooled though. Even though the signs of change are here, I know we still have more hot spells ahead of us.)

Red and Orange Aspen Leaves — Intensely colorful red and orange autumn aspen leaves in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Right on schedule, photographers’ thoughts turn to fall colors. In the last week I’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of shared photographs from previous autumns, featuring those beautiful colors that we hope to see again this year. People are starting to post questions — where is the best color? what is the best time to go? what will happen this year? Reports of “the earliest color ever!” have started to appear — as they do ever year at about this time! Continue reading Autumn Color is Right Around the Corner →

Photographs: Arizona, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest

Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

March 15, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn aspen trees at the end of a meadow on the Kaibab Plateau

Back in the early autumn of 2014 I headed off to southern Utah for some significant time photographing — first on my own in the area around Kanab and points a bit east of there, then up to Capitol Reef to meet a friend for a few days, then out into a relatively off-the-grid area south of Escalante to photograph with another group of photographers, with a quick stop after that in the town of Boulder, and then west to Zion to meet family members for a few days. Whew! On my first day in Utah I ended up at a motel in Kanab, where I settled in by late afternoon. I originally figured it would be too late for photography, but I found myself with a few hours late in the day and no plans made. I looked at a map and saw the road heading south toward the north rim of Grand Canyon (where I had never been before — it is a long story) and thought, “what the heck, I’ll go to Grand Canyon!”)

I headed out of Kanab with a very amorphous plan to follow the road south, perhaps getting to the rim by sunset if I was lucky. I crossed the valley and began the climb up to the Kaibab plateau where, to my surprise, I found late season aspens along mountain meadows that still had some color. In the dusk light I stopped — I couldn’t help myself! — and made a few photographs of these slender, tall, and straight trees against the backdrop of bare aspens and the conifer forest beyond. (I eventually did get to the rim… but it was already deep in dusk when I arrived.)

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

The Aspen Palette

February 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful eastern Sierra autumn aspen groves along US 395.

This is another photograph from a few years back that I rediscovered while reviewing many, many photographs for a project that I’m working on. I made the photograph in mid-October along highway 395 in the eastern Sierra, where the autumn colors had finally worked their way down from the higher regions toward the valleys. This large grove of aspens is a fall favorite of mine. The sub-grove extend mostly from left to right across the scene, and the genetically related trees of each group seem to change colors at different times and to end up with different coloration — and when my timing is just right and the season cooperates, almost the entire palette of possible aspen colors can appear here at once. In this photograph we have brilliant reds at the bottom of the frame, blending through orange toward yellow/gold, with a few still-green trees and even a few that have lost most of their leaves.

As I worked on this photograph recently I realized that I made it at a time that seemed much different in California. The two preceding winters had brought record levels of precipitation, the high country had opened late with snow remaining much later than usual, and there was water everywhere. This October visit to the eastern Sierra came near the end of the second wet summer, and it looked like we were about to be in for another wet winter, with early season storms. Then the tap was shut off, and we experienced three years are terrible drought. These trees and others in the range are now under a great deal of stress, and the past autumn was a bit of a strange one. And now, in the fourth year, the Sierra is still experiencing far below normal snowfall and far above-normal temperatures.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: aspen

High Country Aspens

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Autumn Color is Right Around the Corner

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Evening Aspens, Kaibab Plateau

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The Aspen Palette

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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.