Tag Archives: gold

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

Curving Aspen Grove

Image October 22, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An aspen grove in various stages of autumn color transition descends from a Sierra Nevada ridge

Some of you may recognize this aspen grove as being somewhat iconic — though you probably also know that it is often photographed in a somewhat different way. It is also usually photographed at a different time of day from when I was there — on a cloudy afternoon as a weather front was starting to fill in over the Sierra crest, moving conditions toward the potential for some light rain or even a few snow showers a bit later on.

Once again, I photographed in this soft light rather than in full sun. The direct sun can overwhelm the colors of an aspen grove like this one, while the soft light opens and illuminates the shadow areas and can even make the colors seem more intense, especially when some of that soft light is a bit directional and fills in the color from behind. This grove is rarely all in prime color condition all at once, since it covers a range of exposures and elevations. Here it is quite colorful both at the bottom and the top, though there are clearly areas where the leaves have already dropped.

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

Aspens in Transition

Image October 17, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large Eastern Sierra Nevada aspen grove partway though the fall color transition

This photograph comes from one of the few specific locations for Eastern Sierra aspen color that I’ll typically name and locate without reservations. It is impossible to miss, as it is right next to US 395 between the towns of Bridgeport and Lee Vining, at the high point of this section of the roadway where it crosses Conway Summit. You can pull over to the side of the road — and if you pass by on the best days you won’t be able to resist — and take in a panoramic view up toward the Sierra crest that includes many beautiful aspen groves. (I’m reticent about sending too many people to less-known, fragile, and quiet locations… especially since there are so many great places where you can find aspen color on your own.)

On this afternoon I passed by this spot as I traveled between a couple of other places where I looked for and photographed autumn color. I, too, was unable to resist (another) stop here. You may notice the soft light in this scene. It was overcast and there was light rain falling closer to the crest. On the scene such light can seem drab and dull, but the softer light also fills in the shadows and can provide you with an exposure that allows you to reveal a lot of detail and color in the post-processing phase. Notice also that the color is far from uniform in this large grove, ranging from peak color (and beyond, in a few cases) to very green trees in the distance. It is rare to find an entire large grove producing uniform brilliant color, since the aspens here tend to change color in phases. I’ve come to like and even prefer this less uniform color change pattern, and sometimes I think that the presence of green trees enhances to intensity of the more colorful trees.

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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

Autumn Color, Sierra Nevada Crest

Image October 15, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mountainsides of autumn aspen color rise toward the Sierra Nevada crest

I had a whole bunch of other photographs (late-summer in the Sierra, European travel/street photography) queued up to post right about now… but fall color is currently happening, and it seems better to post the timely stuff. With that in mind, here is another Sierra Nevada fall color photograph, with others to come shortly. By the way, if you are wondering when to go to the Eastern Sierra to see (mostly) aspen fall color, the core season generally includes about the first three weeks of October, with the middle week often being the most reliable. So, as of today… there is still time!

This is probably a familiar scene to those who travel around the Sierra Nevada’s east side in October to search for aspen color. This valley and these peaks are in one of the more popular locations — though, in truth, you can find good aspen color up and down the east side of the range and in a few places west of the crest, too. I’m most often in this particular spot quite early in the day, but I made this photograph later in the afternoon, when backlight illuminated and highlighted the aspen colors, a few clouds cast moving shadows across the scene, and a gentle haze softened the details of the highest peaks.

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

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

November 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

I’ll start with a story about crowds, but I’ll end on a better note. :-) I drove to Yosemite Valley on this late-October weekend partially to photograph early fall color in The Valley, but also so that I could attend an exhibit opening at Gallery Five in Oakhurst — where the final showing to the 2017 Yosemite Renaissance exhibit had been installed. I have visited the Valley for years at about this time, since fall colors there typically peak around the end of the month. On this trip, my first indication that I wouldn’t exactly be alone in the park — despite there being a lot of wildfire smoke — was the extraordinarily long line to enter the park, even very early in the morning. Further into the Valley I was stunned by the number of cars and visitors — it wouldn’t have been anything special during the summer, but near the end of October? I decided to head up to the Curry Village (sorry, “Half Dome Village”) area to park where I could wander off and make photographs, but when I arrived there was literally no place to park — not the Village lot, the overflow lot, the nearby roadways, or anything else all the way up to nearby campgrounds. I was floored…

I finally left that area and found a pull-out along the roadway, parked my car near some a portion of the forest filled with colorful big leaf maple and dogwood trees, and headed off into an area where there was virtually no one else around. Yes, there are such places here, even on busy days. As I walked I spotted a number of potential photographs, but I kept going, walking slowly until I finally reached the banks of the Merced River. I made a few photographs there in solitude before turning around and slowly starting back the way I had come. I now had in mind a few trees that I thought might make interesting photographs, so I paused and poked around near them looking for compositions. This photograph falls into a category that I think of as “order from chaos” compositions, in which there is an almost overwhelming amount of detail tied together (I hope!) by some underlying compositional order. Here the darker branches and trunks of trees supply that order underlying the complexity of the colorful big leaf maple leaves.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: gold

Curving Aspen Grove

Aspens in Transition

Autumn Color, Sierra Nevada Crest

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

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