Tag Archives: canyon

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Early Fall Color, McGee Canyon

September 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Early fall color comes to McGee Canyon in the eastern Sierra Nevada, California.

I’m going to use today’s post not only as the opportunity to share another daily photograph, but also to share some observations about the arrival of the fall aspen color season in the eastern Sierra Nevada range, where I spent a good part of the past week.

I made the photograph at the very end of a three-day backpack trip up into the McGee Creek drainage, where we settled in at a 10,000+” lake for a couple of nights to enjoy the late-season solitude. (Before starting the pack trip I had spent a couple of days in Tuolumne Meadows, and upcoming posts will concern that part of the trip.) McGee Canyon is an eastern Sierra “type” – a typical trailhead canyon that rises from the high desert, into forests, through increasing rugged and rocky country, and finally reaches the crest of the range at a pass. On this early afternoon we were fortunate to get a few clouds, moderating the intense sun and adding a bit of texture to the landscape. The photo was somewhat casual – still wearing my full pack, I shot hand-held.

About the onset of fall color… I have watched this transition carefully for a number of years. While I have learned a lot about how the process unfolds, I have also learned that many aspects of it defy precise prediction. Every September, those of us who chase eastern Sierra aspen color start to watch for signs that might provide clues about the nature of this season – the amount of snow during the previous winter, how late it remained before melting out, long-range weather forecasts, early color changes in many other plants that can show up even in late August, and more. But, truth be told, in the end every aspen season seems to hold surprises and defy out attempts to know in advance how it will play out. A season may start with early color up high, only to be interrupted by early storms. Or a season may start late and then move very quickly. Or poor early color in one part of the range may lower expectations… only to be followed by great low-elevation later on. Or there may be any number of other possible variations, too numerous to list.

All of this is my way of saying to take my observations with a suitable dose of salt. :-)

Several weeks ago I began to read the typical early September notes about “early color” here and there, especially in portions of the Rockies and some areas of the Southwest. I was intrigued, but not ready to believe it. I read and hear these reports of early color every season – and generally the correlation between what is written and what occurs in the actual event is weak.

This has been an odd summer season for me, for reasons I won’t go into here. As a result, I had not been to the Sierra since early July or so – a very large gap of time for me, since I rarely allow more that a couple of Sierra-free weeks to occur in the summer. I was not there at all during August – which is almost unheard of. I usually catch my first hint of oncoming autumn on one of those late-August visits. It is hard to put my finger on precisely what it is, but invariably (well, almost invariably, since it didn’t happen this year…) there will be a day when I sense “something” in the air that reminds me that summer will end very soon – whether it is a breeze, a quality of light, a change in the plants, I can never tell for sure. But I am sure when I experience it.

Soon there are more concrete signs. The golden-brown dried meadow areas start to expand, the wildflowers are harder to find, corn lily plants begin to turn golden-yellow, bilberry leaves turn dark red (and brilliant red when back-lit) and the leaves of willows near streams and lakes turn yellow. By mid-September all of this is typically underway, and at this point I start thinking about aspen color in earnest. Whether it is because we tend to go to different places to find our aspens or because we have experienced different seasonal variations, individuals will tell you to look for the aspen show to begin at somewhat varying times. I tend to look for real aspen color around the very beginning of October, and to expect a peak roughly a week into the month in the higher country. Except for watching for the odd tree with a branch full of yellow leaves, I don’t expect to seem much real color in September.

But… I just returned from a pack trip that was right in the middle of September… and I saw a significant amount of aspen color. As I drove over the Sierra crest on my way to the east side I was not expecting to see aspen color, and I did not see much. Despite the other sources of fall color, the aspens just east of Tioga Pass and down in Lee Vining Canyon were almost uniformly as green as I expected. When we arrived at our eastern Sierra trailhead, there were a few yellow leaves here and there, but nothing too out of the ordinary. However, a mile or two up the trail I was quite surprised to find large stands of aspens in which many trees were showing color – just a few leaves on some, but perhaps a quarter or a third of the tree in the most extreme cases. In my experience, this is unusually early – but at least a week and arguably perhaps a bit more. (Not all of the color in the photograph comes from aspens, by the way.)

What does this mean? I’m not sure. If I had a bit more time I would have investigated one or two other east-slope canyons to see what is going on elsewhere – it could be that this canyon is somehow out of sync with others. But I doubt it. All I’ll say is the following: Some aspen color is already beginning to appear in some areas of the eastern Sierra. While no one knows when the main show will arrive (or what it will look like), if I were making plans for a visit to the eastern Sierra to photograph aspen color, at this point I would lean toward going a little bit early rather than a little bit late. However, as always, realize that you cannot count on the timing or the quality of the display, and flexibility increases your odds of being there at a good moment.

More articles on Eastern Sierra aspen photography:

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees and Granite, Morning Light

August 18, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

First morning light on trees and granite slabs near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph a year ago, almost exactly, in August of 2011, while on a trip of several days devoted to photographing the High Sierra, mostly in the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite. A year later I do not remember all of the details of this morning, though I recall that I had gone very early to the Olmsted Point area to photograph the glacial erratic boulders and some rugged trees growing on the granite slabs found in the area. Perhaps this was among the first photographs I made, before heading off to shoot my primary subject, since the series it comes from includes the very first light to strike these trees, while its angle was still small enough to hit the trees but not the rock.

When I came upon this photograph in the old raw file archive this week, one thing that struck me is the fact that it does include a Yosemite icon (seen from an iconic angle that is often photographed), yet that icon is almost an afterthought and most certainly not the primary subject of the photograph. I posted something here yesterday about photographing icons (“Photographing Icons or Not”), and one of the ideas that you might take away from that post is that it is possible to see iconic sights in ways that do not necessarily repeat the familiar iconic views. (Not to fear, I have the iconic view of this subject, too.) I’m willing to bet that I was thinking a whole lot more about the warm first light on the foreground trees, the way it contrasted with the cooler blue tones of the deep canyon and shadowed ridges beyond, and the texture and shapes of the foreground granite slabs that are so characteristic of this part of the Sierra.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Urban Canyons, Evening

July 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An urban landscape photographed in evening light, downtown San Francisco.

I spent a couple of days in downtown San Francisco earlier this month, with opportunities to photograph early and late in the day. Late in the afternoon I headed out and down Market street, starting out in less that amazing light but anticipating that things would certainly become more interesting as the evening wore on. On this particular walk I mostly headed to places that I already knew from many previous visits. I have often looked at this building and thought that it held to potential for a photograph that wasn’t just a “shot of the building,” but so far I had not actually come up with on. As I walked along the east side of the structure I saw that the very bright early evening sun was streaming across and between other tall buildings to the west and then past and through the columns in the left side of the frame. I positioned myself so that one of the columns just blocked the direct sun to make this photograph.

While I am perhaps mainly oriented to landscapes, both small and large, in my photography, I really enjoy shooting urban subjects as well. In some ways the experiences are very different – obviously the hustle and bustle of a major metropolitan downtown area feels a lot different from the quiet and solitude of the mountains, desert, or shoreline. But I respond to many of the same things in both places – juxtapositions of shapes, textures, and most important, the light. In the latter context, this photograph is not all that different from, say, one that features light flowing over the peaks of a Sierra ridge and down a canyon to pass between the trunks of trees. It is, after all, the same light.

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

Lee Vining Canyon and Mono Craters, Morning

July 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning clouds and haze over Mono Craters, as seen from the upper elevation of Lee Vining Canyon.

East of Tioga Pass, highway 120 (a.k.a. “Tioga Pass Road”) descends relatively gently past Tioga Lake and then Ellery Lake before it drop precipitously down the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada through Lee Vining Canyon on its way to the junction with highway 395 just south of the town of Lee Vining. I’ve driven over it for years, going back and forth between my home in the San Francisco Bay Area and the east side of the Sierra, so I should be fairly nonchalant about it by now – but every so often as I pass over the route (most often looking down into the canyon from above) I wonder whatever possessed people to think that it would be a good idea to route a road across the talus fields and across the steep headway of this canyon.

During last week’s photographic trip to the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite National Park I went over the pass twice. The first time was to scout out some possible shooting locations around Mono Lake – OK, and to get an espresso at Latte Da in Lee Vining – and the second was the following morning when I returned to shoot one of these locations. The night before I had moved my camp to Ellery Lake (it is a long story), which put me a bit closer to Mono Lake, so I was up well before dawn and at the lake before sunrise. After photographing my primary subject there right at dawn, I stuck around long enough to photograph the early morning light and haze above the lake, then headed back to break up my camp before heading home. As I crossed that headwall high up above Lee Vining Canyon, I looked east toward the Mono Craters. Looking that way is pretty much a habit, but I rarely find it to present anything that I want to photograph. This morning was different. I quickly found a turn-out and drove back to this spot. A nice haze filled the air (I like atmospheric haze for photography!), a few clouds clustered around ridges just beyond the volcanic Mono Craters, and a high line of clouds from monsoonal flow were in the far distance, with the steep walls of Lee Vining Canyon backlit and almost seen entirely in silhouette.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: canyon

Early Fall Color, McGee Canyon

Trees and Granite, Morning Light

Urban Canyons, Evening

Lee Vining Canyon and Mono Craters, Morning

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