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

Autumn Aspen Leaves Cluster

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Autumn Aspen Leaves Cluster
A cluster of Eastern Sierra Nevada aspen leaves in full autumn color.

Autumn Aspen Leaves Cluster. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A cluster of Eastern Sierra Nevada aspen leaves in full autumn color.

Here it is — finally — what I expect to be my final photograph from this year’s autumn aspen color in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Like many of the others, I made this photograph while wandering about in a little grove that happened to be showing exceptional color this year. To some extent that color was because my timing was just about right, but it also seemed like a more colorful year than usual, with more of the red and orange leaves that I usually see.

When I’m in the field I often line up a sequence of potential photographic opportunities to explore as the light evolves. I might start with a subject that will work in pre-dawn light, then move to one that focuses on the first light of sunrise, and then be ready to photograph things that work in the light that arrives a bit later. That’s what happened with these leaves. The light on a major landscape subject that I was photographing had mostly run its course a half hour or so after sunrise, so I moved to this grove which was still in the shadow of a nearby hill. That light was perfect for making close up photographs of leaves, since the soft light reveals details in everything from shadows to highlights.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Backlit Aspen Leaves

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Backlit Aspen Leaves
“Backlit Aspen Leaves” — Eastern Sierra autumn aspen leaves against a splash of background color.

At this point I now appear to be down to just four more of my 2020 autumn aspen color photographs from the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and all of them are up-close photographs of just a few leaves like this one. As I have written previously, my opportunities to get to the Sierra to photograph the aspens this fall were limited by pandemic-related travel issue and by the historically bad wildfires in California. However, on my brief visit I encountered really wonderful color, some of the best I’ve seen in years — and in the end I came back with more photographs than I would have expected from such a short visit.

Almost all of this year’s close-up leaf photographs were made during a short, slow ramble through a single grove that I’ve visited for years. It is a place where I often stop to photograph the smaller elements of the autumn scene, though I managed to arrive just in time for a very special color display this season, with abundant leaves in every possible variation of aspen color. The intention underlying the composition of this photograph was to highlight the two mostly-red leaves and to contrast them with the out-of-focus mass of yellower leaves in the background.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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

Shoreline Aspens, Autumn

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Shoreline Aspens, Autumn
Colorful autumn aspen trees line the shore of an Eastern Sierra lake reflecting high peaks in morning light.

Shoreline Aspens, Autumn. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful autumn aspen trees line the shore of an Eastern Sierra lake reflecting high peaks in morning light.

As I worked my way through what is actually a rather small collection of aspen color photographs I made this season I kept thinking that I had found all of the photographs worth taking through the full post-processing workflow. I was really only on the East Side for about 48 hours on this visit, and I made most of the photographs in two specific spots. But so far, each time I have “finished” and taken my final look at the raw files… I have come up with yet one more that I did not want to leave behind.

This is one of several I made from this location along the shoreline of this lake. Once I realized that I was going to be here I pre-selected a couple of spots to set up, and this one was on the agenda for my last morning before heading home. I knew that I wanted the foreground red trees in the the photograph, so I had to find a spot with a bit of elevation above the lake. I located it and the rest of the series of photographs was made from camera positions within about a five foot radius, adjusting my locations slightly to deal with some overlaps. Because it was somewhat smoky from wildfires, I decided on this composition as a way to exclude the more distant elements that tend to show the smoke up more clearly.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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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 Leaves, Near and Far

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Aspen Leaves, Near and Far
A group of autumn aspen leaves against a background of aspen forest, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Aspen Leaves, Near and Far. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of autumn aspen leaves against a background of aspen forest, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

At some point during almost every aspen season I end up looking away from the big views and getting up close to the colorful leaves. I can think of several reasons that I do this. One, of course, is simply that the leaves are a fascinating subject, with almost infinite variations of color and pattern that are expanded by the many qualities of light that can be found in aspen groves. Another is that at some point, to be honest, the big views can become a bit to… familiar. I’m not referring here just to the lovely iconic views that are familiar — and which I photograph, too. At some point, the giant groves of beautiful trees with bright colors and white trunks may just start to look a bit too much… the same.

I was in a very familiar location when I made this series of close-up aspen leaf photographs, a place that I’ve been photographing for well over a decade — long enough to watch it change from a usually-quiet place to one that can be just a bit overrun. This grove, with which I’m also quite familiar, was in excellent form when I was there. The leaves included almost every possible color in the spectrum from green through yellow and orange to red, with a wide variety of leaf patterns. There was soft, luminous light intensifying the colors, and by moving the camera position just a bit I could find all kinds of variations in the out-of-focus background areas.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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