Tag Archives: green

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

Aspens, High Desert Valley

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Aspens, High Desert Valley
Autumn aspen trees line a creek through a high desert canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Aspens, High Desert Valley. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Autumn aspen trees line a creek through a high desert canyon, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Heading across the Sierra early in the third week of October, I wasn’t certain what kind of aspen color I would encounter. There’s always some color at this point in the season, but in many years it has been diminished by wind and passing early weather fronts. But it seemed that these influences were muted this year, and as I approached Sonora Pass I was encouraged by seeing much more color than I expected. I turned south after crossing the pass I headed south where the forests of the Eastern Sierra begins to meet the high desert sage country. As I passed this small valley — where I had not really paid attention to the color potential in the past — I caught a flash of bright color below. I quickly turned around and backtracked to locate a better camera position.

Getting just the right conditions for these trees that grow along shallow canyons like this one is tricky, especially on the eastern slopes of the Sierra. Typical daytime light is often quite harsh, though that diminishes a bit with autumn’s lowering sun angles. But this time I got lucky, and broken clouds created patterns of light and shadow on the sage-covered hills. I set up and waited for the light to show up in the right places, and eventually it lit up the trees in the Vally and produced alternating light and dark patterns in the hills and mountains beyond.

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: New England

Peak New England Color

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Peak New England Color
“Peak New England Color” — A White Moutains forest of almost-exclusively hardwood trees at the peak of fall color.

This photograph, if nothing else, illustrates some aspects of how New England fall color is different from what I usually photograph in California, particularly in the Sierra Nevada. Out here the colors tend to be relatively uniform, usually yellow to brown, broken by occasional examples of other colors. For example, the great majority of our aspens turn yellow/gold, which is why the occasional red and orange exceptions attract so much attention. And the Sierra trees are far less likely to appear in huge, mountain-covering stands — they more typically line the bottom of a valley, run upslope along a gully or other feature, and are surrounded by green conifers.

So what differences can we see here? First, the hardwoods vastly outnumber the sparse conifer trees. (I like the contrast the latter provide, however.) The hardwood forest stretches for great distances — that area of the photograph is quite large but it is only a small portion of the fall-colored trees I could see here. The tree color is also much more diverse, here including every shade from green through orange and red.

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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: New England

Autumn Leaves, White Mountains

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Autumn Leaves, White Mountains
“Autumn Leaves, White Mountains” — Autumn leaves and soaring tree trunks in a White Mountains forest.

This photograph illustrates a few important take-aways from fall photography, things that can be extrapolated to other kinds of photography, too. Again, the location was not iconic, even though it is along/near iconic places. We had stopped after seeing a sign for a pond, but I ended up finding the nearby forest even more interesting. Note that not all of the trees have changed color. As overwhelming as a fully fall-colored forest can be, the colors often stand out when there is some “non-color” in the frame, too. Note, too, that I made this photograph in soft light, which intensifies the colors while opening up the shadows. Finally, I think that some non-color structural elements can help with the composition of photographs of the subject — here that comes from the verticals of the tree trunks.

One thing we learned on this trip — our first to New England in the fall — is how quickly the leaves reach and then pass their peak color. The build-up seems a bit slower, but there was literally one day when it was obvious that the peak had arrived. And only one day later the leaves began to fall more quickly, bare trees became more apparent, and the color was in decline. The show wasn’t over, but the process was clear. Fortunately, because the color doesn’t arrive everywhere at the same moment, flexible photographers and leaf-peepers can move on to different locations that haven’t peaked yet.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photograph

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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: New England

New England Woods #7

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New England Woods #7
The autumn color explosion begins in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

New England Woods #7. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

The autumn color explosion begins in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Every year at about this time I head to the east side of the Sierra Nevada to photograph fall color, which mostly means aspens. This year’s trip to the “east side,” however, was to the east side of the United States. That’ right, Patty and I finally made it to New England for its famous fall color season. (Don’t worry, I’m still hoping to squeeze in a quick visit to Sierra fall color before long.) Friends have told me for years that I had to see east coast fall color, and an August visit to Vermont’s beautiful forests intrigued me even more. Then I did a B&H podcast (“Fall Foliage East and West with Jerry Monkman and G Dan Mitchell“) and listened to my fellow interviewee, Jerry Monkman, talk about photographing there. After all of that, I guess it was pretty much fated that we would go this year!

I’ll have a lot more to say about New England fall color, the specifics of our visit, and how the East and West Coast experiences compare later on — there’s too much to write in a single post! I made this photograph near the start of the visit, perhaps a day or two before this year’s peak color in this area of the White Mountains. The color variations are, as I already understood, much greater in New England than in the Sierra, and the hardwood forests seem to all change nearly simultaneously. This photograph, like many of my favorites from this trip, was made in soft light and cloudy conditions, which provide some of the most beautiful light for this subject.

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

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