Tag Archives: bishop

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Color, South Fork Bishop Creek

October 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Brilliant peak autumn color in aspen groves along the south fork of Bishop Creek, eastern Sierra Nevada.

One week earlier I had visited this same area only to find a mixture of trees that had lost their leaves during a series of early fall snow storms and trees that were essentially still fully green. What a difference a week made! This fall it seemed that once the color change started, it moved quickly. Not only were these middle elevation trees in full autumn color, but in many places the color extended all the way down to the edge of Owens Valley.

These trees are along the south fork of Bishop Creek, off of the road to South Lake, and not far from so-called “Mist” or “Misty” falls. (I’m skeptical about this waterfall – it gives every appearance of having been constructed by redirecting water to a place where it would not likely flow naturally. I’ll welcome accurate information about that.) Perhaps because these trees grow in a fairly open and wide valley, many of them have managed to grow rather tall and quite straight, in contrast to a number of other Sierra groves that consist of small and often twisted trees. The rows of trees angle up slopes from the creek in the valley bottom and seem to be arranged in diagonal groves that ascend the hillside.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lone Tree, Autumn Snow

October 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun shines on a lone tree on a rocky ridge after early autumn snow storm dusted the upper reaches of Bishop Creek Canyon, California.

This was the first clear morning after several days of early season snow in the Sierra Nevada. Earlier that morning I had driven the still unplowed road up to North Lake and photographed there for several (very cold!) hours, starting before sunrise. As the sun rose higher and I decided to drive back down the road, possibly to some lower elevation groves that are first hit by morning sun at a later hour. The road leaves North Lake and makes a few twists as it descends toward a long traverse of the hillside above the valley holding the town of Aspendell.

As I crossed this section of the road, two things happened. First, and somewhat oddly for a semi-isolated gravel road on a snowy day, a number of vehicles came up the road at about this time. This forced me to pull out alongside the narrow road and allow them to pass – after which I watched several of them get stuck on the slippery road just above my pull-out point. This, of course, brought the traffic to a dead stop while the flat-landers figured out how to drive their fancy AWD (!) vehicle on snow. Second, as I stopped here I caught sight of this interesting tree slightly below and off to the side of the traverse, on a hill still covered with fresh snow and backed by the shaded talus slope on the other side of the valley. Being stuck for a few minutes anyway, it seemed like a fine idea to take the camera and tripod out again and photograph the tree while waiting!

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

Aspen Grove, Filtered Light

October 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Gentle light filters to the forest floor within an autumn aspen grove near the south fork of Bishop Creek.

This is yet another of my familiar and favorite aspen groves in the south fork of Bishop Creek Canyon. Despite the fact that the frame is completely filled with trees in this photograph, the grove is not all that large, being a lot longer than it is thick. Behind me there is a gravel road and then a creek, and at the far edge of these trees the landscape abruptly opens up to talus slopes leading towards tall peaks to the south.

I like this spot for several reasons. For one thing, it is a bit off the beaten path since you have to leave the main road in a not-that-obvious spot and then follow a one-lane dirt road that winds through the trees. In addition, there is nothing obviously special or scenically attractive about this exact spot – the first time I stopped in this exact location is was primarily because there was a wide spot along the dirt road to park my car! This is another of those aspen groves that consists of densely packed and rather small and spindly trees. The trees are close enough together that it is actually rather difficult to walk among them, and I had to twist and turn and duck to get into this spot.

Partly because of the filtered light and the density of the trees, and partly because I shot with a very wide-angle lens, it seems like the edge of the grove is a long ways off and quite indistinct. By the point at the edge – which is probably just barely visible in a print – the detail of trunks and branches and leaves is so dense that the boundary is very hard to see.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Grove, Boulders

October 26, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn aspen trees among large boulders, Bishop Creek, California.

There is something special and perhaps hard to define about the light inside an aspen grove as the leaves change color in the autumn. It is a visually complex place in many ways – various colorful leaves are overhead, more leaves are dropping constantly to the ground, the ground itself is littered with layers of leaves ranging from brand now and colorful to old and black, other materials such as rocks and grasses and brush may grow between the trees, and the interlocking branches of the closely spaced trees can make progress difficult to nearly impossible. And every grove seems to have its own unique personality. Some will be full of tall and straight trees, and may allow more light in. Others may consist of trees barely taller than a person, and thin-truck trees may be packed closely together. Some have been affected by difficult soil or heavy snow and are full of bent and twisted trees.

This grove is almost within a small campground in the south fork of Bishop Creek. I have shot in this area in the past since a nearby section of the grove often seems to suddenly drop masses of colorful leaves very quickly, so it can be a good place to shoot leaves on the ground. This time, though, I wandered in a different direction and ended up in this area where smallish and seemingly stunted trees grew among large rocks and boulders. The challenge was to try to find a composition in this very busy scene. The first challenge is finding a spot that is open enough to show an expanse of the grove, followed by then moving the camera – sometimes by fractions on an inch – to try to come up with some reasonable alignment of trees and boulders, all the while trying to avoid letting the overly bright sky end up in the frame.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.

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