Tag Archives: bishop

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Red and Orange Aspen Leaves

October 24, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Intensely colorful red and orange autumn aspen leaves in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Late in the day on this rainy eastern Sierra fall day I headed for a small dirt side road that I know of in the Bishop Creek drainage. Along this road are a few special aspen groves that I have photographed in the past, including one with very slender trees and sometimes fiery colors. This time I was there a bit earlier than in the past and, ironically, the leaves on these trees were so thick that they didn’t lend themselves to the photograph I had in mind. I did make a few photograph of these trees – one of which will likely appear here before long – but then I decided to try something other than what originally brought me to this spot.

I put the 135mm f/2 lens on the camera – perhaps not a typical landscape lens, but quite nice for shooting close images of leaves and creating soft background blur – and went hunting for small groups of leaves with appropriate backgrounds. Because it was late in the day and in an area where the sun drops behind ridges fairly early and overcast and raining intermittently, the light was really interesting. While this light can mute some colors, it also fills in the shadows a bit and can intensify the colors of bright subjects like the aspen leaves.

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, Near Sabrina Lake

October 23, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Bright yellow-gold leaves of autumn Sierra Nevada aspen trees near Sabrina Lake, California.

I visited this small grove on a couple occasions during this weekend of eastern Sierra fall photography. I had primarily stopped to photograph a large nearby grove of very bright and colorful trees, but the arrangement of these tree trunks caught my attention and I spent some time shooting the subject in fading evening light and gentle rain.

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

Autumn Aspens and Peaks Above North Lake, Morning

October 15, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Morning light on colorful autumn aspens below the alpine ridges and peaks at North Lake, Sierra Nevada, California.

This was a particularly beautiful morning at iconic North Lake in the Bishop Creek drainage of the eastern Sierra Nevada. While dozens of photographers lined up tripod-to-tripod at the lower end of the lake, I decided to look elsewhere. After spending some productive time walking the road along the shoreline of the lake and searching out some of the smaller and perhaps less-obvious subjects, I saw the conjunction of this very colorful group of aspens at the bottom of the frame, the morning light on the peaks and broken by the passing clouds, and the carpets of smaller aspen trees ascending the higher slopes of Piute Crags. Rather than doing the classic “lake with mountain shot” that we’ve seen so often from North Lake – and it is a wonderful view! – I thought I’d try to more tightly frame these portions of the scene that got my attention.

I made this photograph with what some might regard as a somewhat unusual landscape lens, the Canon EF 135mm f/2 prime. This is a really wonderful lens that is often used for other subjects such as low light photographs of people and even for portrait work. It is a wonderful lens – in many ways not all that flashy, but just a very reliable and quality performer. I’ve written before that I most often use zoom lenses to shoot landscapes – and there are a number of reasons for this that I won’t go into right now – but I also carry a small number of primes when shooting like this, and if I have the time to work more slowly and the composition works for one of the primes I’ll use it instead.

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.

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