Tag Archives: Cloud

North Lake, Autumn

October 26, 2008 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn at North Lake with aspen trees turning yellow and orange and new snow dusting Piute Peak.

Photographed right after the passage of an early season weather front that had dusted Piute Peak with a bit of snow – in fact, it is still snowing up there in this photograph. This photo was made at the lower end of the lake it what is one of the classic photograph spots at North Lake, or so it seems. The next morning I came back to this lake to photograph a nearby aspen grove and I passed by here thinking I might stop and photograph the lake again. That is, I thought so until I passed the spot and saw photographers lining the shoreline here tripod to tripod – I’ve never seen so many photographers trying to find their own personal vision from exactly the same spot at the same time before… ;-) Needless to say, I settled for the photos of the lake I had made the day before, when high winds and intermittent snow seemed to reduce the number of photographers to a more reasonable level.

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Photographs: Sierra Nevada

North Lake and Piute Peak, Autumn Snow

October 25, 2008 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An autumn snow squall moves across the upper reaches of Piute Peak with fall colors around North Lake in the foreground. The snow is still falling on the peaks in this photograph, and the high winds have created some choppy lake water. Yes, although you probably can’t tell from this photograph, it was COLD when I shot this!

Photographed on a very cold October morning right after an early season weather front had passed through, dusting Piute Peak with a bit of snow. The post front weather was very windy, as evidenced by the chop on the surface of this small lake.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens and Early Snow, North Lake

October 24, 2008 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An early autumn snow fall dusts the ridge above the aspen groves at North Lake, Sierra Nevada, California.

Another photograph from my early October 2008 visit to the Bishop Creek area. On the first morning I left Bishop very early, waiting only long enough for the local Starbucks to open. (There I admired a couple of Vern Clevenger photos hanging on the wall – his gallery is next door – and saw a few other bleary-eyed photographers getting some much-needed coffee.) Although the weather was clear in Bishop, it began to cloud up as I drove up toward North Lake. When I arrived before sunrise it was cloudy there, but it looked the conditions might be good for some early morning aspen photography.

But not for long. Almost as soon as I took my gear out of the car the wind came up, the temperature dropped and it began to rain and then snow. I quickly holed up in my car to wait it out, and an hour later the sun began to emerge in between the light snow showers. This well known grove of aspens on the far side of the lake climbs a valley toward the ridge. Although many leaves came down quickly in the wind as the front passed, there was still a lot of color in the grove. Here there is still light snow falling on the ridge, even as sunlight slants in from the right.

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Commentary, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Snow Squall, North Lake and Piute Crags

October 7, 2008 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Autumn snow falls on Piute Crags above the fall foliage at North Lake. Sierra Nevada, California.

This photo marks – knock on wood! – the return to more a regular schedule of posting new photographs.

As always, there is a bit of a story behind the photograph. Last weekend (the first October weekend of 2008) I managed to do one of my annual aspen chasing expeditions, timed to catch the trees as they change from green to golden, yellow, red, orange, and a thousand intermediate hues. I left the Bay Area on Friday afternoon and drove over Tioga Pass, stopping there for a moment to feel the force of the first incoming Pacific storm of the season. After dropping down from the pass and stopping for dinner at Whoa Nellie Deli I continued on to Bishop, where I checked into a motel at 9:30.

I wasn’t certain what the next morning would bring since the weather report called for the passage of the weather front and then some showery weather and dropping snow levels. When I left Bishop well before dawn the stars were out, so I was optimistic. As I drove west and up into the Bishop Creek drainage, however, the clouds increased, and by the time I arrived at North Lake before 7:00 a.m. it had clouded up completely. No problem, I thought, the air is still and I like shooting in overcast conditions, especially with the saturated colors of the aspens. I got out of the car, put my camera on the tripod, grabbed the rest of my gear, and started towards a spot with a good shot. Within moments the wind whipped up and it began to rain, very quickly turning to wet snow. I was quickly back in the car, hoping to wait it out and see what developed.

Before long there were breaks in the clouds, and although the cold wind was blowing like crazy and there was still some intermittent precipitation, I decided that the conditions were special enough that I’d better get out there and start shooting. (While I can imagine more comfortable conditions for photography, sometimes the most interesting conditions are not comfortable.)

Eventually I made a fairly extensive set of photographs from various areas along the shoreline of North Lake. This one was made near the outlet of the lake, looking back across the nearby grassy shoreline, and past wildly colored aspen trees to the more distant Piute Crags, where a snow squall was partly obscuring the summit.

keywords: fall, autumn, storm, squall, snow, piute, crags, north, lake, bishop, creek, aspen, grass, meadow, water, tree, forest, branches, cloud, scree, talus, landscape, scenic, stock, nature, wilderness, shore, shoreline

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