Tag Archives: eastern

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

Aspen Grove, Yellow and Green

October 20, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The transition from green to yellow foliage in an eastern Sierra Nevada aspen grove

Aspen color is a more complex and fascinating thing than what if first seems — and that first impression is quite a strong one to begin with. The first thing most of us see when we learn about aspens is simply “brilliant color,” enhanced by the tree’s juxtaposition with other spectacular landscape elements and amplified when the trees are seen in vast and colorful groves. In fact, there are few things more astonishing than a huge grove of aspens at peak fall color, stretching up and across a sub-alpine landscape on a fall day.

Once you catch the aspen bug — and have seen quite a few of those vast and colorful groves — subtler things start to become interesting. There are too many elements to fully describe them all in this little post, but they include the patterns produced by the white trunks, almost regardless of leaf color. The color shadings are more varied than we first see — from the first lime-green hints of upcoming color change, through the spectrum of colors encompassing yellow and gold and red and orange and brown, and including the subtler effects of brown and black leaves late in the season. When I saw this vignette (within a much larger grove) my firs thought was perhaps “not quite at peak,” but I think that the combination of a few leaves just arriving at near-peak color against the background of leaves yet to change is pretty interesting, too, especially when the scene is cut through by those stark white trunks.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Eastern Escarpment

October 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada rises from desert hills to rugged aretes lit by dawn sun

Depending on how you approach the range, the Sierra Nevada presents two quite different aspects to the visitor. For many decades, as a long time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was only familiar with one of them. I always came to the range from the west, on long drives over coastal mountains and then across the Great Central Valley. As I approached the east side of the Valley I would encounter the low hills, at first almost imperceptible, that humbly mark the beginning of this might range. Because it tilts upward from the west, the western slopes are overall very gradual. Rising through these first low hills, the grass and oak covered landscape raises over a distance of many miles, and it is quite a while before the range starts to feel like “the mountains,” and many hours before the visitor arrives in the high alpine zone of rugged granite peaks. Even here, to the west of the crest there are plenty of gentle valleys and meadows.

The east side is a radically different world, as I finally began to understand two or three decades ago. The eastern base of the range is an arid near-desert place, made more so by Los Angeles’ historic draining of east side waters that once irrigated now-dry places and once filled today’s dusty playas with shallow lakes. The Sierra rises abruptly from this lower landscape, and in places you can look up nearly 10,000′ to the highest summits — you stand in desert and look at alpine peaks, and you see every zone in between. I made this photograph at dawn from one such valley location where the landscape that of sagebrush and playa and alkali lakes. From this spot I looked across low hills with the first coniferous trees toward the abrupt rise of the eastern foothills, backed by jagged and rugged slopes leading upward to high peaks.

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

Eastern Sierra Sunrise, Autumn

October 13, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

First light on rugged, snow-dusted ridges above aspen-covered Parker Bench

This is a special place, high along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada and open to the first dawn light from the east. It is also just far enough off the beaten track and difficult enough to access that it is usually not very crowded. (Don’t worry if you can’t get to it, there are thousands of other places where you can have a similar experience in the eastern Sierra.) We recently got up early enough to drive here and arrive well before sun rise. To this day, despite seeing many sunrises, I still often am surprised at how quickly the light comes and how silently. Living in a culture in which every spectacular thing, or thing that we are supposed to regard as being spectacular, is pumped up with loud music and lots of action, the sunrise comes often comes in complete silence and with little warning — you look up and notice that the light has already struck some small element of the scene, and soon you discover it moving across the landscape and quietly lighting more and more bits and pieces. I made this photograph when this first light had hit the rugged upper slopes above this aspen-covered bench, but before it had worked its way down to the trees.

This photograph also illustrates something I finally figured out about this strange eastern Sierra fall of 2015. This year the season began oddly, with very early first color in many places. In addition, many groves simply did not have leaves — either they lost them so early that I never saw them or perhaps they did not put out leaves this year. In other groves the leaves went almost straight “from green to gone,” with little or not brilliant color phase. Where this happened, I think it was the result of the four-year drought creating tremendous stress on the trees. At the same time, other climate factors thought by some to be associated with the drought also had the effect of delaying the color change of trees that were not as stressed by the shortage of water. Instead, these trees are changing later, likely due to overall warming temperatures. So far, this has been a season not quite like any other I’ve experienced. In this photograph you can spot examples of almost all of these conditions — completely bare groves, groves that have turned and already dropped leaves, some that are going straight from green to having no leaves, and even some trees that are still very green.

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

Aspen Forest and Hills

October 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ranks of autumn aspen trees ascend the slopes of the Eastern Sierra toward the crest in afternoon light

This is a photograph of brilliantly colorful eastern Sierra fall foliage… in black and white. Because I can! The location is along US 395 as it passes along the eastern escarpment of the range, and in this spot the hills are terraced upward toward the Sierra crest, high above and out of sight in this photograph. Aspens grow in abundance on these lower slopes, interspersed with grasslands, and leading to more aspens up higher and eventually to conifer forests.

I like to photograph in this area in the late afternoon, when low angle sun light comes streaming over the top of the mountains and backlights the trees and accentuates the effect of haze. While the close trees probably first got my attention, it was the little row of trees in the far distance, seen near the upper margin of the photograph, that eventually intrigued me the most. Why black and white? To be honest, one reason that I thought of this at the time I made the exposure was that, frankly, the colors were not yet at their peak. As I though about that it became clear to me that this photograph was not so much about fall color as it was about fall atmosphere — that softening and warming of the light, the gentle haze that mutes the details of more distant subjects. And I thought of this as just a little bit of a personal challenge. Frankly, it is probably easier to make a photograph in color that says “autumn.” But I know that black and white photographers have been able to accomplish the same thing, and I thought it would be interesting to give it a try myself.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: eastern

Aspen Grove, Yellow and Green

Eastern Escarpment

Eastern Sierra Sunrise, Autumn

Aspen Forest and Hills

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