Tag Archives: eastern

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

Old Tree and Autumn Color, Sierra Nevada

October 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An old tree stands above an eastern Sierra Nevada valley full of autumn aspen color

I got a somewhat late start on first day of this year’s trip to the Sierra to photograph the annual aspen color transition. The plan was to begin in the Tahoe area, since I needed some photographs of that region, and to then work my way down the east side of the range as far as Bishop. This was to be a somewhat complicated trip, since I’m concurrently working on a number of projects, not all of which are related to this photography! For this reason and others, I wasn’t able to leave early in the morning like I usually do, but I figure that this would still get me to some of the good aspen areas by the late afternoon hours of good light.

I went into the Sierra on highway 88 and climbed toward the Sierra crest at Carson Pass. Although the west side of the crest isn’t typically the best place to look for aspens, this pass is a bit of an exception, and I saw my first colorful autumn aspens well before the pass. There were more and more of them as I got closer to the pass, and I stopped to photograph some of them in the good light from the west. Before long I crossed Carson Pass and started down the east side toward Hope Valley, an area with lots of aspen trees. My first stop was not far below the pass, where I found this weathered old roadside tree standing high above the upper valley, where aspens were changing color in the background.

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

Aspen Thicket, Eastern Sierra

October 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fall color in a dense aspen thicket along an eastern Sierra creek

The exact location of this grove probably doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t seem necessary or even useful to reveal it here. With just a bit of looking about you can find many groves that are equally interesting all over the Sierra Nevada at this time of year, but especially on the east side of the range. I had seen this grove from a distance in the past, and once or twice before had thought to approach it on gravel roads. In fact, it is possible that I actually did visit or drive past at some point in the past. But for no particularly logical reason, on this trip I spotted it again from a distance and decided to go there and poke around.

In addition to its relative inaccessibility and lack of popularity, this grove has a couple of other things going for it. Many of the Sierra aspens tend to be somewhat small and not always straight. Such trees do have a special charm and I photograph them all the time. However, to be honest, sometimes California aspen photographers can be just a bit jealous of those groves of giant, straight and tall trees that seem to be more common in some other western states. This grove has those trees — tall and straight and towering above. In also has one of the densest examples of undergrowth that I’ve seen in the Sierra. My initial idea was to walk deep into this grove in the late afternoon as the light diminished, but I quickly figured out that this wasn’t likely given the dense bead of overlapping fallen tree trunks, thick brush, and thorn plants. So instead of trying to get through that jungle, I changed my mind and decided to make it the subject of the photograph instead.

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

Bare Trees, Wall of Leaves

October 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of bare aspen trees stands in front of a grove of colorful aspens

This photograph was almost an afterthought at the end of an evening of shooting up high in an east-side Sierra canyon where many of the trees had lost their leaves, and the rest were at the brilliantly colorful phase that comes right before the leaves fall. When I came up the canyon I took a little gravel side road that passes through another grove of small but interesting trees before heading on up to the end of the road “just because it was there.” This is not an obvious photographic spot, since the trees are not large and because it can be difficult to find the right backgrounds.

There is something special about soft, evening light on fall foliage, and especially on aspens. It can produce a very intense quality of color, and the soft light shines into shadows and lowers contrast. As I moved slowly up this small roadway I could see that there was a band of quite colorful trees along the banks for the creek, and that between me and this color there was a thinner line of trees that had already lost their leaves. This let the stark trunks and branches of these trees stand out against the wall of color from the trees that still hadn’t lost their leaves.

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

Sierra Aspen Groves, Autumn

October 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen groves in varying states of autumn color, eastern Sierra Nevada

This photograph was a bit of an unplanned surprise. (The truth is that quite few aspen photographs are just that — partly because I’m always looking around for places I haven’t photographed before, and partly because one never knows what the aspen conditions will like until arrival on the scene.) I had started my morning with a plan that evolved a bit. Up well before sunrise, my initial plan to was to explore an area of east-facing slopes along the edge of the Sierra where I knew that colorful trees would be scattered about. As I drove to what seemed like the obvious starting point, I thought about a very large grove that I had earlier spotted very high up on these slopes… and as I looked that direction I saw a set of headlights up there! That was all the encouragement I needed to find a narrow a steep track that took me way up high on a ridge from which I photographed those trees at dawn.

When I finished shooting there I took a few minutes to finally eat something and then figured that I would try a “sure bet” location nearby. I drove back down the single-track gravel route, got back on pavement, and headed there. Sure enough, there was a lot of brilliant color in this area. As I drove up the road I spotted rows of aspens at the edge of a meadow, still in soft shaded light, but not seeing a photograph there and with my mind on another subject up ahead, I kept going. Before long I was done with that “other subject” and I decided to head toward a third (and non-aspen) subject, so I turned around and headed back the way I came. As I passed this spot again, something about the light and the trees caught my attention again — mainly the soft effect of light reflected into this shaded grove — so I stopped and made a series of photographs that mostly just “show what is” about these trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: eastern

Old Tree and Autumn Color, Sierra Nevada

Aspen Thicket, Eastern Sierra

Bare Trees, Wall of Leaves

Sierra Aspen Groves, Autumn

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