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

Autumn Aspens and Meadows

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Autumn Aspens and Meadows
Autumn aspen groves broken up by meadows along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspens and Meadows. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn aspen groves broken up by meadows along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada

Yes, still more fall color photographs! I’m getting close to the end of this year’s batch, and you are likely to see other subjects a bit more in the near future. Some of you will be happy about that and others will be disappointed. :-) Overall, this turned out to be a pretty good season for Sierra Nevada color, at least in my view. I heard a few people say that it wasn’t that great, but I think that the elements of luck and timing and location make a big difference — and all of those played out well for me this year.

This photograph comes from a place where there are lots of large groves spread across eastern Sierra hillsides. There are many places like this, so the precise location probably isn’t all that important. I happened to be there at just about the peak of the color, and I found an elevated position from which to photograph down into the backlit trees.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Foothills

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Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Foothills
Colorful aspen groves ascend the foothills in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Foothills. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful aspen groves ascend the foothills in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Indeed, I’m still going through this year’s photographs of fall color and other autumn subjects. It actually turned out to be a very beautiful fall in and around the Sierra Nevada. I suspect that the return to normal (actually above normal) precipitation had a big influence, and the contrast with the previous five drought years was quite large. I managed several trips into the range during the month of October, the prime time for most fall color, visiting the east side and also Yosemite Valley.

The best aspen color came, as it typically would in my experience, about a week and a half into October. The color begins earlier than that at high elevations and among some of the smaller trees, and then it generally works its way downward over a period of perhaps three weeks or so. I made this photograph right in the heart of that period, on a three-day foray that took me to a variety of locations. (I’ve been photographing this subject long enough that if I encounter less than stellar conditions I can usually pick up and quickly move to something better.) This spot is pretty well known and easily visible from US 395. I have photographed it many times, and now I’m either looking for astonishing and rare conditions or else a perspective that is a bit different. This photograph looks down into a group of large trees that are backed by a carpet of smaller trees, at peak color and ascending the hills toward the Sierra crest, all illuminated by very late afternoon light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest

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Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest
Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Just for fun… a fall color photography in black and white! I have the greatest respect for our photographer predecessors who set about photographing the beauty of fall color with only monochromatic shades to work with. It can be done, but it isn’t quite as straightforward as photographing fall color with today’s capable digital cameras. It is all too easy to let those colorful leaves end up having monochromatic tones that aren’t that much different from the same trees in the green season! Light helps, as does some selective use of filters — glass filters in the old days and post-processing analogs applied to digital files today.

I made this photograph close to a rather popular fall color photography location, though the exact location isn’t quite in the usual spot. It presented a challenge or two that I won’t describe here. The light was, to use the old euphemism, “interesting” at this point. The late afternoon light was coming in at a low angle and lighting up the trees nicely, but the sky was a bit tricky. Some high clouds were floating over the Sierra crest peaks, and their brightness posed a dynamic range challenge while their shadows fell across the peaks. There are many things I like about this scene — the way the curving forms of the groves lead away and up toward the Sierra crest peak, the long shadows, the alternation of sunlit ridge and darker valleys, and those distant peaks with a bit of autumn snow dusting their summits.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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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

Aspen Groves, Early Evening

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Aspen Groves, Early Evening
Early evening light on aspen groves with fall color, Eastern Sierra Nevada

Aspen Groves, Early Evening. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early evening light on aspen groves with fall color, Eastern Sierra Nevada

As with virtually all locations with fall color, especially the fall color of aspen trees, timing (and/or good luck about timing!) is everything. There are so many variables that can make or break a photograph of autumn color, and some of them are beyond our control. Precisely when does the color peak in a specific location? What are the effects of the preceding months of weather, from winter snows and summer rains to the temperature patterns? What about preceding days of weather — has it snowed, how cold has it been, have there been strong winds? On the day of the photograph, what are the clouds doing? Are you there at the ideal time of day — perhaps a time when there is some backlight on the trees and other distracting elements are perhaps less well-lit?

Sometimes it all comes together — or close enough — and you find a scene with beautiful color, few trees that have completely lost their leaves, perhaps a bit of green remaining, the light in the right place, and more. For what I was after I had a window of only a few minutes to make this photograph. You may have noticed that the evening shadow has already reached the very bottom of the frame, but that the light has softened and warmed enough to bring out the color in the trees. But what you cannot see in the photograph is that I came to this same location two prior times over the period of a week, one of them the previous night. On those visits it did not work quite right — clouds covered the sky, it was hazy, too many trees were green, near gale force winds were blowing, and more. A rule of landscape photography is that the more chances you give yourself, the greater the odds that you’ll be there when the elements all happen to fall together.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.