Tag Archives: autumn

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

Pond and Autumn Aspens, Evening

October 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn color aspens reflected in an eastern Sierra Nevada pond

I saved my visit to this place for the final evening of the final day of this year’s aspen hunt. Although I had passed by the mouth of this canyon four days earlier, while heading to another location near the start of my trip, I had only glanced in from the main highway — but I could tell, both from experience and from looking, that there would almost certainly be some good color here later on. Although the color change seemed to start on a rather early schedule this year, later on the pattern seemed to become closer to the norm. Color started high, and by the time I made this photograph a lot of the highest elevation color was going or gone. (Not all of it though — even amidst lots of bare trees up high, I still came across scattered high elevation groves full of color.)

As the color transition continues, it moves to successively lower elevations, and some of the most protected east-side canyons can hold color even longer. In the past this has often been a decent late season location for color, but I’ve also been there when the color came and went early, for reasons I could not decipher. So on this day when I actually entered the canyon for the first time this fall, I wondered if the colors that I could see along the stream where it emptied into larger valley below might be all there was… or if the color would continue up higher. It turned out that the colors did continue, and in outstanding form! The majority of the trees had fully or nearly fully changed color, with a few other trees at either end of the transition — some still all or mostly all green, and a few that had gone to bare trunks and branches. Far up the canyon there are flooded meadows, and I made this photograph at the highest of these ponds.

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

Green and Yellow Aspens

October 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A grove of green and yellow autumn aspen trees in the eastern Sierra Nevada

Since I just spent some days photographing autumn color in the Sierra Nevada, I’m going to interrupt the continuing series of early September Yosemite back-country photographs to share at least one of these recent autumn photographs. I began in the Tahoe area and this year I followed a path partly dictated by a fall color project that I’m working on, heading south through Hope Valley, then over Monitor Pass and continuing on the Bishop Creek area for a day of shooting before working my way back up into areas roughly around the intersection of routes 120 and 395 near Lee Vining.

As much as we all have “our places” to look for aspens, I was reminded again during this little jaunt that you can pretty much go anywhere in the Sierra or along its eastern slopes this time of year and quickly find tons of autumn color. I have a few favorites, indeed, and I understand that those just discovering the fall colors may want to go to “sure bet” places, but I’m having more and more fun just poking around and finding color in lots of odd little places. This location is very close to an area where many, many people were stopped to photograph some very spectacular color in a well-known place — but here, just a ways down the road, I was the only person shooting as cars whizzed past on their way to those other places.

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

Lake Shore, Autumn Bilberry

September 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A harbinger of Sierra Nevada autumn, red bilberry plants carpet the shoreline of a sub-alpine lake

This photograph evokes, for me, that special feeling of the end of summer in the high country, when the awareness of the changing seasons is heightened and there is an odd combination of relaxation as the pace of mountain life slows and a feeling that the time of year when access to such places is easy is rapidly coming to an end — and that in a matter of weeks places like this one will be snow-covered and largely inaccessible for another year. It is also a time, perhaps for these very reasons, when the recognition of the natural cycles of seasons and lives becomes more acute.

The red carpet on the close ground along the shoreline consists of small bilberry plants. This small plant is normally easy to overlook. It stands perhaps an inch tall, often in clusters in clear areas along lakes and among trees. During the summer it is, frankly, just another little green thing among many. But in September it transforms into something that you cannot help noticing, especially if you look across a patch into the sun — backlit bilberry suddenly becomes flaming red. Beyond the near shore, trees scattered along a rocky peninsula and small islands catch the last warm and soft light of an “almost-autumn” evening.

Morning Musings

My Favorite Season (Morning Musings 9/23/14)

September 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn Afternoon, Merced River Cottonwood Trees *

Just a quick note today to celebrate the autumn equinox and the start of my favorite season of the year. Summer is the time of easy travel and access to the backcountry, winter brings appealing extremes of weather, and spring the greenery of a new season. But autumn seems to have a bit of all of these things, at least here in California, and in some ways the best of each of them.

Today the calendar says “fall,” but the weather is still more summer on this part of the west coast. The edge is off the heat for the most part, but it is still pleasantly comfortable. Yet, after the relative stasis of the summer season, things are beginning to change once again. Back in early September I saw the hints in the Yosemite backcountry, but they are even more unmistakable by now. Up there the aspens are starting to turn colors and will soon drop their leaves. (See “Sierra Nevada Fall Color Season – Coming Sooner Than You Think!“) Even here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the air feels different — and we are watching the weather forecasts, hoping for the first real rain (which may come later this week) and for snow in the mountains. Soon that snow will fall up there, and we’ll be fully into the interesting weather season. And it won’t be long at all until migratory birds return to my favorite locations in the Great Central Valley.

So, here’s to autumn!

* “Autumn Afternoon, Merced River Cottonwood Trees” was originally posted here.

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: autumn

Pond and Autumn Aspens, Evening

Green and Yellow Aspens

Lake Shore, Autumn Bilberry

My Favorite Season (Morning Musings 9/23/14)

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