“Snow-dusted Highlands Peak” — A highlands summit rises above a sun-dappled hill.
After six weeks of travel, almost two weeks of it in beautiful Scotland, some location memories begin to blur together. I cannot say precisely where I made this photograph. It was on the day we left Skye and made our way north to Ullapool. My recollection is that we had perhaps passed through some rain at a high point on the route, and we came to this peak and its foreground hill as the weather was beginning to clear, allowing a bit of sunlight into the scene. (It is hard to identify these Scottish peaks after returning back to the US, but this one may be Spidean Coire nan Clach.)
“High Desert Aspen Trees” — Aspen trees with autumn foliage ascend a high desert gully in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
These sage-covered foothills are at an elevation of 8000′ and higher, but they are brown and dry, especially this late in the season. Technically this spot is part of the Sierra Nevada — it certainly seems so when you look at these peaks. However, it feels more like high desert than part of the mountain range.
The little grove of aspens grows in the bottom of the canyon that drains the nearby highlands. These trees were approaching their peak color, but with changing light I had to work quickly. Cloud shadows were moving across the landscape, and the shadow of the low hill at bottom right was starting to intrude on the colorful trees.
“East Side Canyon, Autumn” — An east-side Sierra canyon with autumn cottonwood and aspen trees below snow-dusted slopes.
Well, I thought that I had shared the last of this fall’s Sierra Nevada aspen photographs. But then I took another look at my raw files and decided that a few more were worth working up. This is one of a set of four in that group. It features one of the steep canyons that rise along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra. There is a row of cottonwood trees in the foreground and larger groves of autumn aspens far up the canyon.
You can’t tell from the photograph, but it was almost impossible to make pictures here doe to high winds. I had parked along a rough gravel road and was alternately making photographs and cowering behind my vehicle as gusts swept through. Between that wind storm and the snow that came in a few days later it was a tricky year for aspen photography in the Sierra.
Autumn aspen groves, lengthening early evening shadows, and snow-dusted peaks in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
Seeing a photograph here with the Roman numeral “II” attached you may wonder if there is a version “I.” There is, of course, and the first of the pair was posted a few days ago. In this case, the only significant difference is that this is a “landscape” orientation view of the scene and the other version used the “portrait” orientation. When the subject allows it I often photograph in both orientations — partly for practical reasons and partly because they both seem to work!
The scene is a type that I like a lot, at the elevation where the forests we expect in the high country meet high desert sagebrush country. The aspen trees seem to like both, and they are frequently a bridge between the two types of terrain. Here it is late in the afternoon (or perhaps early in the evening?) and long shadows are starting to stretch across the landscape.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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