Tag Archives: aspen

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

Golden Aspen Grove, Conway Summit

October 13, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Groves of tightly spaced slender aspen trees with golden fall leaves at Conway Summit, California.

Conway Summit is a location well-known to many eastern Sierra photographers, especially those who photograph the autumn aspen color displays. The “Summit” is the high point on the highway 395 just north of the town of Lee Vining, and the aspens grow to the west on the slopes that gradually rise toward Dunderberg Meadow and Peak. When I’m looking for brilliant autumn color here, several factors come into play. First, you have to be there at the right time. This isn’t always easy to predict, and when the color is great in one area of these trees it may have passed or not yet arrived in others. Second, you need to come at the “right” time of day. For me this means, at least at Conway, coming in the mid- to late-afternoon when the groves are lit by backlight coming across the Sierra crest. Third, it helps a lot if you can be there for conditions that are not too ordinary. For example, on the afternoon when I made this and some others photographs that may follow, after a weekend of boring perfect cloud-free weather some puffy clouds began to form above the Sierra crest, and their shadows raced across the area and created patterns of light and dark.

This photograph is also an example of long lens landscape photography. For some reason there are those who think that landscape photography must be done with certain lenses, often those of “normal” to wide focal length ranges. Those certainly have their place, and I use them too. However, I find that longer focal lengths are also indispensable – not just for filling the frame with subjects that you otherwise might not be able to approach, but also to compress foreground and background and to narrow the depth of field, among other reasons. Here I photographed with a 100-400mm telephoto at 250mm.

This photograph is 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: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Grove, North Lake Road

October 12, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Fallen leaves in an aspen grove along the road to North Lake, Sierra Nevada, California.

This photograph of a grove of large and small aspens with much undergrowth and fallen leaves was made on a morning of beautiful soft and diffused light as a weather front was moving in and light rain was starting. In this light the harsh highlights of the bright leaves are softened and the shadows open up (since the sky becomes one giant light box) so that details become more apparent and the colorful trees and leaves can almost glow.

This grove is beside a road used by many photographers to get to one of the most popular and iconic fall color locations in the eastern Sierra. As I worked alone, or nearly so, in this small grove on a gentle hillside, five minutes up the road perhaps 50 or 60 photographers were lined up side by side at the end of a lake to make the same photograph. In fairness, the subject of their photographs is a very beautiful and compelling one… but I urge photographers to look beyond the “same old, same old,” and to slow down and search out subjects and compositions that only become apparent with time and some contemplation.

This photograph is 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: Sierra Nevada

Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Aspens

October 11, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 10 Comments

On a week of brilliant fall color during an autumn when the color was exceptional in parts of the eastern Sierra, this little grove of aspens was almost absurdly colorful. I first saw them while driving away from a nearby shot – their fluorescent colors got my attention while I was looking in a completely different direction. The colors nearby were quite something, but they literally paled next to this grove. (I’ve heard trees like this referred to as Cheetos trees – and I think you can imagine why.)

Should you think that this color is simply something I’ve pumped up in post processing, take a look at the boulder in the lower part of the frame and see the tree trunks and the pale grasses at bottom right. The fact that I shot in over cast conditions, late in the day, and in a very light rain did intensify the colors a bit, but this is what they looked like.

These colors present some photographic challenges. The main one is that almost all of the light is in the red channel, and when shooting a digital camera it is easy to blow out (grossly overexpose) the red channel and not even realize it. I have found that with this subject it is critical to use the three-channel histogram display that shows the separate levels of red, green, and blue. The single luminosity histogram display averages the values of the three color channels, and if one is extremely hot (as is the red channel here) you can blow it out even if the histogram looks fine.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

California Fall Color, News

Quick Eastern Sierra Fall Color Update

October 9, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

I visited a few locations in the Mammoth-to-Bishop area today, and can add a bit of information to the general knowledge floating around on the net. I can’t speak about the whole Sierra, obviously, but some of what I saw today might give an indication of how things are evolving.

As a point of comparison, when I was in the area last week (the first weekend of October) the colors were tremendous at some of the popular, higher elevation areas around and a bit north of Bishop. In fact, the colors then were as good as I’ve ever seen. This was enhanced by the light rain and the overcast, both of which intensify the colors and reveal more subtle details.

Between then and now the Sierra had some serious early season snow and, at the lower elevations, rain. Partly due to this weather and partly to the normal progression of color, this week those higher areas have many leafless or nearly leafless trees – the colors there have pretty much run their course. The colors have moved down a bit in elevation, but have not yet caught up to what they were before. You can find good colors now, but you have to look a bit harder.

The good news is that there are a lot of very green trees in many of the middle and low elevation areas. This bodes well for the color prospects in the next couple of weeks.

I really prefer to photograph aspens in overcast conditions with subdued light. In fact, when it is clear I’ll often photograph the trees before the light is on them or wait until the evening and photograph them after the shadows from higher peaks move across the groves. This weekend, however, it is bright and sunny. On all counts except for aspen photography, it is beautiful weather! Today there were two somewhat special conditions. First, there is significant snow on the higher peak, and especially on the White Mountains across Owens Valley to the east. And this morning there was a fair amount of fog in the valley areas. In fact, this seemed so interesting that I chose to shoot these conditions out in Owens Valley this morning rather than chasing aspens!

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.

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