Tag Archives: bare

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Tree, Winter Light

January 16, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A bare winter tree and clearing tule fog.

On Sunday there was ground fog all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and I had a few free hours, so I headed out to see what I could find. I went to a place that is very familiar to me, a local haunt where I have hiked and photographed for decades. I had not been there in perhaps a year, so it was good to reestablish my relationship with the location and note a few changes. The little trip also reminded me that it isn’t necessary to travel long distances to find photographic subjects — quite often a closer look at nearby places will reveal worthy subjects.

The idea here was to arrive before the fog cleared, photograph in the thick fog for a while, and then be ready to photograph the brief transition period as it thinned, a time when brilliant and stunning but ephemeral light may appear. During my short drive to this location the fog remained thick, but just before reaching my destination it began to clear, likely because ground fog doesn’t stick around as long in the hills. As I parked and loaded up a light load (my lightweight trail photography setup) there were still some pockets of fog clinging to the hillsides, but in most places there was instead a sort of haze that glowed when I photographed in the direction of the sun. I’m very fond of this kind of light, so I quickly looked for subjects that I could use to advantage, and I soon found this tree standing on a grassy hillside and silhouetted against the glowing atmosphere beyond.

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

Cliff Face and Bare Aspen Trees

November 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bare aspen tree trunks and branches against a backdrop of a Sierra Nevada rock face

There are all kinds of ways to photograph aspens, and they can be photographed during virtually any season: winter trees with snow, spring trees with new leaves, summer trees surrounded by wildflowers and grasses, autumn colors, and this wonderful time when the bare trees stand out against the rest of the surrounding terrain. At this latter stage they can be photogenic on their own or they can be set off against backdrops of other trees, rocks, or the fallen leaves littering the ground.

These specific trees have gotten my attention in the past. They grow against a fractured granite backdrop, and they are in a location where I might go to photograph other fall subjects. So when I go to photograph those subjects, I often end up walking past this spot and pausing. While nearby trees still had a lot of colorful leaves, these smaller trees had already dropped almost all of theirs.

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: Nevada

Nearly Bare Aspens

October 9, 2017 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Aspen trees with only a few leaves remaining, Great Basin National Park

In this post I continue, at least a bit, the theme of my last post: the varied rate of fall color change. In the previous post I wrote about the variations in the eastern Sierra Nevada — how early the first signs of color can occur, how late in the season it may be when the final aspen leaves fall, and the varying rates at which the colors arrive, even in limited geographical areas of the range. But if you stretch your horizons beyond the Sierra the variations are even greater.

We first “discovered” this a few years back when we visited Utah in the fall. I often make a point of not doing too much research before visiting a new area, and often this has the advantage of letting me discover the place on my own terms. On the downside, sometimes I miss the timing a bit! On that Utah trip I assumed that the colors might change on the schedule I’m used to in the Sierra… and we ended up arriving too late for the best aspen color. On the trip where I made this photograph I assumed that, since the location is virtually on the Nevada-Utah border, color would come earlier, and I arrived about a week before the end of September. In fact, the color change was underway, though still not quite peaking. But in a few spots, including the little grove where I made this photograph, some trees had almost completed their fall color season already!

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

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

July 4, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An eastern Sierra grove of slender aspens with a hint of fall color remaining

There are interesting subtleties to the autumn transition of aspen color in the eastern Sierra. Unlike forests in some other areas, where the trees are more similar across wide areas, and thus tend to change colors at the same time, in the Sierra the color change has many variations of region, climate, moisture, and elevation. It is quite possible to arrive at a grove to find that almost all of the leaves have fallen… only to visit another grove not too far away where the color change is still getting underway.

This is a somewhat unusual little grove. The trees are very slender and crowded closely tighter. They are also, generally, smaller than those in the more-or-less typical Sierra aspen grove, where trees may be larger but also tend to be bent and even misshapen. These slender trees stand tall and straight, and at the time I made the photograph they had lost nearly all of their leaves, leaving a somewhat ghostly forest of bare trunks.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: bare

Tree, Winter Light

Cliff Face and Bare Aspen Trees

Nearly Bare Aspens

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

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