Tag Archives: autumn

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

Meadow, Trees, Granite Wall

November 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The immense granite face of Cathedral Rocks looms behind trees of El Capitan Meadow in autumn afternoon light

This meadow, located between two of the largest cliffs in Yosemite Valley, is both an obvious place to make photographs – everyone does it – and a place of nearly infinite variations of light, season, and atmosphere. Sometimes when I’m in the Valley I may stop here two or three times during the day. As is the case in other spots in Yosemite Valley, the place changes radically depending upon what the light is doing – soft early morning or evening light, strong light coming down the Valley in the early morning, light blocked by cliffs at midday, strong backlight in the late afternoon. And many of these changes happen very rapidly. As I made this photograph I could virtually watch the shadow move over the trees from the right.

The granite face rising beyond this meadow – one of the two I mentioned above – has always attracted me for some reason. Although not as high as the much more famous El Capitan, in some ways it seems to me to look more forbidding. It seems to lack the obvious crack systems seen on El Capitan, and unlike the larger wall, which is often bathed in sun, this one is often in shadow. In winter it casts a shadow across this portion of the Valley in the middle of the day, though a low spot may allow a beam of light to sweep across this area in the late afternoon.

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

Autumn Snow, Hope Valley

November 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early autumn snow flurries in Hope Valley

On this early October drive across the Sierra, eventually heading for the town of Bishop, we crossed Carson Pass from west to east. The object of the drive was to photograph fall subjects on the east side of the range, but there was nothing to keep us from starting early – and we began searching out colorful autumn aspens and other subjects even before reaching the pass. Light snow started west of the pass, and when we stopped at the turn-out at the pass a decent amount of snow was falling, the wind was blowing, and it definitely felt like winter. Back in the car we started down the east side of the pass.

The snow continued as we took a short detour on a gravel side-road, then returned to the main highway to head east on highway 88 through Hope Valley. I first visited Hope Valley many years ago when I had just begun cross-country skiing, and today I often pass through on my aspen-hunting trips. The aspens were turning colors on this day, and if you look very closely you can see a very large grove of them in the distance through the snow. We briefly stopped at the turn-off to Luther Pass, where I made this photograph looking back up the creek that flows through the valley. Snow was falling and there was a thin layer of snow sticking to everything. As if to prove that photographers aren’t the only people nuts enough to stand around in the cold wind and snow, there was actually a fisherman along the creek just out of the frame to the right!

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Early Autumn Snow, Eastern Sierra

November 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An early autumn snow storm obscures the view of pines, aspens and other fall foliage in the eastern Sierra Nevada

This photograph, like a few others I have posted this fall, was made on an early October day when we drove across the Sierra from west to east during the first “real” snow of the season. Our goal was Bishop, California, since we planned to photograph autumn aspen color on the “east side” for a few days. Since the usual more direct route over Tioga Pass was closed due to snow, we ended up crossing all the way up close to Tahoe over Carson and then Monitor Passes to get to highway 395, which we then followed southwards along the east side of the Sierra.

The snow began before we reached Carson pass, and though it never fell very heavily, it more or less continued for the rest of the drive, only stopping shortly before we got to Bishop. This was quite a contrast to the weather we had been having, which had been up into the low 90s in our part of California only a few days earlier! Since we had the whole day to get to Bishop we made frequent stops and detours along the way, giving us lots of opportunities to photograph scenes that had a distinctly winter-like appearance. One place we paused was along a high point on highway 395 just north of Lee Vining, where huge groves of colorful aspen trees were just visible through the blowing snow. Turning slightly away from the aspen color, I chose to make a few isolated evergreen trees the focus of this photograph.

Photographs: England, Photographs: Nature

Aspen Color, Eastern California

November 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Peak autumn color in a small stand of aspens high in a desert mountain range east of the Sierra Nevada

It is no secret that I love aspen trees, especially in the fall, and that I’m a big fan of the aspens along the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. I photograph them every year, and I have come to know quite a bit about where to find them and how to photograph them in a variety of conditions ranging from sun to clouds and rain to snow. The aspens in this photo are also in California… but just not in the Sierra.

For a while I’ve had the idea to photograph aspens that are east of the range, since I have seen them from time to time while out there, but usually at the “wrong” time of year. This year I had a chance to make such trees the target of some travel, and we went looking for them east of the Sierra between roughly Long Valley and Bridgeport or thereabouts. The specific location of these trees is not all that important, though I’ll say that we came across this stand in some mountains east of the Sierra – as we rounded a bend and dropped into a valley in mostly sagebrush and juniper country, the stunning color of this grove along a small stream bed provided a vivid contrast with the surrounding terrain. We stopped and wandered around the edges of the grove, mostly making photographs of the trees themselves rather than their larger setting. Sierra fall aspen photographers are (sometimes painfully) aware of the ways that aspen leaves can deteriorate in the autumn, including brown or black spotted leaves or trees that go straight to drab dead leaves without passing through a colorful stage. However, the leaves on these trees were among the most perfect I have seen, with barely a blemish and with intense colors covering the spectrum from barely green though golden and on towards orange and red.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: autumn

Meadow, Trees, Granite Wall

Autumn Snow, Hope Valley

Early Autumn Snow, Eastern Sierra

Aspen Color, Eastern California

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