Tag Archives: flora

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Trees, Rock Face With Lichen

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Aspen Trees, Rock Face With Lichen

Aspen Trees, Rock Face With Lichen. Near South Lake, SIerra Nevada, California. October 3, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful lichens on a cracked cliff face between two aspen trees with fall colors near South Lake, Sierra Nevada, California.

I had passed by this section of rocks and cliffs just below Parcher’s Resort earlier in the day, noting the interesting trees against the jumbled background of the rock – but I decided against shooting there at first because the direct sun was still hitting the trees. Instead, I made a mental note to check back much later in the afternoon after the sun had moved lower and further west to put this area into diffused shadow lighting.

I came back later – when it was getting quite cold! – and wandered up and down this area making several exposures. The trickiest thing was that it was extremely windy. Low light, strong wind, and fluttering aspen leaves tend to conspire to make photography tricky, and this was no exception! The best approach seemed to involve not only high ISO… but also a great deal of patience. Once I set up a shot I would wait… and wait… and wait for a small lull in the wind, during which I would squeeze of a few exposures.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit

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Aspen Leaves in Transition - Near Conway Summit
Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit

Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit. Sierra Nevada, California. September 27, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen leaves in transition from green to fall hues in the shade of a grove above Conway Summit, Sierra Nevada, California.

This is another of my close-up aspen detail photographs from my one-hour or so shoot in the eastern Sierra near Conway Summit on the last Sunday of September. I took a quick detour to this part of the “east side” after completing a short photographic backpack trip to Cathedral Lakes that weekend.

I’ve photographed this grove before, so I stop every season and see what I can find. This time I think I arrived a few days earlier than usual in the color transition. There were still a lot more leaves on trees in the grove than I’ve seen in the past and a nearby grove was still completely green. (This grove is among the first you encounter as you drive up the road from Highway 395/Conway Summit toward Virginia Lake, right by a dirt road turnoff on the left side.)

As I walked into the lower edge of the grove, I discovered that among leaves that were for the most part either green or yellow, there were a few here that had a wider range of colors – some residual green, yellow, gold, orange, and even verging on red. So, in addition to shooting the larger view of the grove, I decided to use a long lens and work on a few close shots of the leaves that most caught my attention.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Aspen Leaves Near Conway Summit

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Aspen Leaves Near Conway Summit

Aspen Leaves Near Conway Summit. Sierra Nevada, California. September 27, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen leaves take on fall colors in the middle of a grove near Conway Summit, California.

This is more or less my first autumn aspen color photograph of the 2009 season. Near the end of September I was in the Sierra for a few days, mostly to backpack into Cathedral Lakes for a bit of photography – but after emerging from that trip I had just enough time for a quick trip over Tioga Pass to the “east side” near Lee Vining and then around Conway Summit and Virginia Lake.

In the past I’ve found that the aspens up high on the road to Virginia Lake seem to change fairly early, and they have often lost their leaves even while trees elsewhere are still in good condition. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to try to make an early trip up this road. As you start up the Virginia Lake Road from Conway Summit you soon begin to pass some fairly large groves of aspen trees. The first grove, along the right side of the road, was still almost completely green. However, just up the road from here and on the left side is another grove at the turn-off for a gravel road – and this grove was in great shape. Many of the leaves had turned golden, and a few had turned hues of red and orange. At the same time there were still quite a few green leaves and only a few leaves had fallen.

As the sun dropped closer to the high ridge of the Sierra crest above Virginia Lake, the east side of this grove began to fall into shade – which can be the best of conditions for photographing the intense colors of these leaves.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Late-Season Corn Lilies and White Flowers

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Late-Season Corn Lilies

Late-Season Corn Lilies and White Flowers. Yosemite National Park, California. August 24, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Golden late-season corn lily plants at Half Moon Meadow, Yosemite National Park, California.

The summer goes so quickly in the High Sierra! It was barely a month ago that I was in the Young Lakes region for a few days and the wildflowers were just starting to come into form, and only a couple weeks ago when I encountered peak condition wildflowers above 10,000′ in the upper Sabrina Basin. While you can still find wildflowers – including in this photograph! – if you know where to look in the Sierra, the signs of the coming autumn are beginning to appear throughout the high country, as they do every year at about this time.

Every year, there seems to be a day during the second half of August when I’m in the Sierra and I get a very clear and distinct impression of a change. In many cases I’m hard pressed to identify exactly what it is, but I know it is there. It might be something about the changing angle and quality of the light. Sometimes I think changing air movement and wind patterns may play a part. Perhaps it is the end of the lush moisture from melting snow. In other cases it is more obvious – like when I begin to see these late-season corn lily plants begin their transition: first they are thick and green; then a bit of  brown begins to appear at the tips of the leaves; soon the veined pattern of the leaves begins to pick up brown and yellow streaks; before long some of the plants turn wild yellow and gold colors and their stems begin to weaken; and in a short time they fall over and taken on the texture and color of old corn stalks.

I photographed these brightly colored leaves at the edge of Half Moon Meadow in Yosemite during the last week of August while on a three-day pack trip into the Ten Lakes Basin.

(If anyone can identify the small white flowers in this photo I would be very grateful. And, no, the flowers are not growing from the bright yellow corn lily plants! 10/11/09 – I think we have  a winner. It looks like it might be a plant called gray’s lovage.)

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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