Tag Archives: eastern

Looking for Eastern Sierra Aspen Color?

October 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Since this is the season of aspen color along the east slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, it seems like a good time to share a link to my article on where and how to find and photograph these beautiful trees: Sierra Nevada Fall Color Season – Coming Sooner Than You Think.

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow - A small aspen tree branch blown down by an early fall storm rests on snow, North Lake, California. — Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow – A small aspen tree branch blown down by an early fall storm rests on snow, North Lake, California.

I originally wrote this article four years ago, in response to a lot of questions about this seasonal change, and I have updated it regularly since then. The short story is that the aspens begin to change near the end of September in a typical year, and if you know where to look you can find aspen color for the next three weeks or perhaps just a bit longer. The change starts in the highest groves of trees and then works its way down to lower elevations as the transformation progresses, with later potential down along the base of the range and in some of the east side canyons.

I have not (yet) been up to photograph the trees this season – though I plan to rectify that situation very soon! – but everything I’m hearing right now suggests that the change came earlier than usual this year. In a more typical year I would expect to see the best color perhaps starting right about now and continuing for another week or longer – but this year there are a lot of reports of high elevation trees already dropping leaves and of lower elevation areas already in peak form. If you are going this year, I would make it sooner rather than later!

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Desert Sky, Negit Island

September 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mono Lake and dark Negit Island beneath a vast and cloud-filled summer sky

Mono Lake still seems like a somewhat mysterious place to me. Although I’m familiar with parts of it, having gone by and to it for many years on Sierra trips and having photographed there many times, I find it hard to quite get my mind around it in the same way that I can with many other places. There are probably several factors that contribute to this. First, it is obviously an absolutely huge place. While I can see the far side of the lake and the mountains beyond, they are a great distance away, as I’ve realized when traveling just part way around it – so I have looked at much of it but I have not directly experienced that much of it close up. Second, we feel that we know the chief features of this lake very well – they are, I suppose, the lowering water level of this close-off basin lake, its tremendous size, the mineral-filled water, and the famous tufa formations. But a bit more time, even only that time that I’ve spent there that is mostly secondary to “Sierra time,” and it starts to be clear that these things are not the whole story.

Some years ago, when photographing the tufas around dawn, mostly when almost no one else was around, I began to catch on to the fact that things like the sounds of flocks of birds, the immense distances on land and – especially – in the huge sky, the wind, and the deep quiet of the place have more to do with its character than the tufas. Often when I stop there now I do not go to the tufas at all, instead perhaps expanding my knowledge of other areas of the lake and surrounding country. This photograph was made from above the lake, in a location where I could look slightly down on the water, which better shows its expanse, and on the dark shape of volcanic Negit Island. But I chose to include them primarily not for their own value but rather to anchor that vast sky with its building afternoon clouds.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Leaves, First Light

June 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light on aspen trees and fall foliage, eastern Sierra Nevada, California

This past fall I had exactly one day to photograph aspens in the eastern Sierra Nevada. This was a bit odd for me, since I usually spend quite a number of days chasing fall aspen color up and down the east side of the range. But this year my target was a bit further away in Utah, and we merely paused for an extra day on the “east side” on our way to that other state. Fortunately, we hit great conditions, in terms of good aspen color and fine weather that didn’t prevent us from getting up to those trees.

Very early in the morning we headed up to an area that I have photographed many times. There are a couple of iconic photographic subjects at this location, but I mostly got them out of my system some years ago and now I look for somewhat less obvious subjects when I go here. I began by shooting some trees near the outlet stream of a lake, with early morning light behind the trees. After working that tricky but beautiful light for a while, I decided to go around to the far side of the lake to where a large stand of small but densely packed aspens stands at the base of a hillside. I got there before the sun came to this spot, so I quickly schlepped my gear up the hill a ways and into the end of the grove, setting up just before the sun arrived. Before the sun’s rays hit the tree, everything had a distinctly blue tone. As the edge of the shadow arrived, the aspen leaves began to glow more and to cast shadows on the trees in the background. These shadows quickly transitioned from soft and subtle to quite contrasty and sharply defined in a matter of seconds. This photograph was made just as the sunlight arrived but before it became intense, and the soft shadows of the leaves on the slender background trunks lasted just a moment.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspen Trees, Boulder Field

June 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful golden autumn aspen trees among eastern Sierra boulders.

This is yet another of the small set of eastern Sierra fall color photographs I made this year, almost entirely on this single day in very early October, when we paused here on our long drive to location far east of here. In a typical year, I would regard this very early date in October as being a bit too early for prime aspen color, but we did find some stands of trees that were showing very intense coloration. In some ways this wasn’t a total surprise, as I had seen some very early aspen color a couple of weeks earlier in sections of the eastern Sierra. One wonders what the cause of the unusual schedule of change might have been this year: the very dry preceding winter, global climate change, or simply an outlier in the normal range of variation.

In any case, we made the best use of this single day of eastern Sierra aspen chasing, starting early in the morning close to an eastern Sierra lake where I know I can usually find good color and then working outwards from there. After a midday break we resumed our search in the afternoon, heading up a slightly different route where we found a lot of very bright golden trees. This group was in a location that I return to frequently – an area of very broken granite and large boulders, with trees of various sizes. It is also an area that loses the sun quite early at this time of year, since it lies east of very tall mountains leading upward to the Sierra crest. To my way of thinking, this is a good thing, since I like to shoot in the soft and diffused shaded light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: eastern

Looking for Eastern Sierra Aspen Color?

Desert Sky, Negit Island

Aspen Leaves, First Light

Autumn Aspen Trees, Boulder Field

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