Tag Archives: foliage

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

Yellow Leaves, White Trunks

October 30, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few yellow leaves remain in a grove of small, tightly packed Eastern Sierra aspens

With this year’s unusual Eastern Sierra fall color transition, I had plenty of opportunities to photograph aspen groves with few or no leaves. Most likely as a result of the four-year California drought, some aspen trees seemed to be under a lot of stress. Some of these trees were bare very early in the season, others changed colors a week or more early, and other simply lost their leaves without a real color transition. (Fortunately, some trees were not as stressed, and these prolonged the color season to and beyond the usual time in mid to late October.)

I enjoy photographing dense groves of small trees, with their complex and packed patterns of trunks and leaves. I spotted this grove a day earlier while in the area, so late in the day when the light started to fade and I found myself nearby, I headed back this way to photograph the grove in fading light. I like photographing aspens in this light, as it fills in the shadows, avoids the stark shadows of midday light, and tends to saturate the colors naturally. I searched this grove for the right spot and finally found it here — a place with almost uniformly dense small trees and a band of strongly colored leaves running horizontally.

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

Aspen Trees, Near-Peak Color

October 27, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small group of aspens against a rocky slope are in full autumn color

Having visited this area a week earlier I was expecting a certain level of fall color in specific places along the shoreline of this eastern Sierra Nevada lake when I arrived here again early on October. I was also expecting to see quite a few other photographers, given that this is an accessible and well-known location. I was not disappointed on either count. As I arrived I found brilliant colors along the small dirt roadway, and I also found photographers everywhere — in the parking lots, along the shoreline of the lake, stopped in the middle of the road, wandering in grassy areas. There were even a few workshop groups collected together in promising spots.

I kept going, passing through the area of the most intense color. My idea was to find a location from which I could get a line back across the valley towards the trees, placing them against a backdrop of the gray texture of granite hillsides and cliffs, and contrasting that with the brilliant color of the leaves, made even more saturated by the cloudy, wet conditions. I found my spot, wandered up onto a slight rise with a clear view of the trees, and used a long lens to isolate them.

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

Grove of Small Aspens

October 23, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense autumn grove of small eastern Sierra Nevada aspen trees with bare trunks

This little grove, and this specific spot in this grove has become a sort of old friend. It is one of those odd little spots that most people would probably miss, and with good reason. The trees are small, they are on the far side of a creek, access is via a short and unmarked little one-lane gravel road, and the trees are in many ways unremarkable, especially in a place and at a time when there are many larger and more spectacular groves nearby.

I first came here by accident some years back, turning into a nearly hidden side road on a whim and then randomly exploring its short length. Part way along there is a wide spot, and I happened to pull off there, get out and look around. The small and very dense trees got my attention, and I discovered that they grow so closely that it is difficult to pass among them. (This year I thought I’d walk through the grove to see what is on the other side — I have up about thirty feet in!) But such a grove, with so many little trees, offers an astounding range of arrangements of trees. I can photograph up close with a wide-angle lens; I can step back and narrow the frame with a long lens, I can move in among the trees, I can visit when the trees are full of colorful leaves or almost bare. In any case, every time I pass by here, without fail, I take the little side road and stop quietly here for a few minutes.

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

Aspen Color

October 22, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful aspen trees near the peak of autumn color, eastern Sierra Nevada

Sometimes it is very difficult to find compositions among the many potential variations related to aspens — and then other times I just feel like pointing the camera at the wild colors and making an exposure. This grove moved me more in the direction of the latter approach! The grove itself is huge, stretching across a valley-bottom creek and then a good distance up a sub-alpine slope. The well watered trees near the bottom tend toward stocky vigor, while the upper reaches are populated by small, slender trees growing among boulders and talus fields.

I had visited this area twice during the previous two weeks, and on those visits I could tell that the color crescendo was coming. So by the time of this visit I was pretty certain that I would see good color and I wasn’t disappointed. The grove was in that wonderful state in which almost every possible aspen color appears at once. There were a few trees that were still solidly green, while others were completing the color change process and had already dropped many leaves. The trees in this photograph were somewhere in between, with spots of intense color ranging from yellow all the way to orange-red. But a few trees lagged behind, still quite green or just entering that telltale lime green phase that indicates that full color is not far away.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: foliage

Yellow Leaves, White Trunks

Grove of Small Aspens

Aspen Color

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