Tag Archives: green

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New England

New Hampshire Forest, Autumn

Image November 27, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

We paused along the Kancamagus Highway to photograph at this large turnout, a place with a parking lot next to a rocky river, where the opening in the forest above the water let a bit more light into the edge of the forest. Just about every variety of New Hampshire autumn color was present where the forest ended at the river’s edge.

I have noted that there are not a lot of places where a photographer can get a bit of distance on such trees — often the opening for roadways is narrow and there isn’t usually a wide shoulder along the highways. The forest is quite dense, especially by comparison to the mostly-open forests that I’m familiar with in the Sierra Nevada. Within the density there is also tremendous diversity, with many kinds of trees growing closely together and, in the autumn, producing a kaleidoscope of almost all of the fall colors one can imagine.

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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

Tall Autumn Aspen Trees

Image October 30, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tall aspen trees with long, white trunks on an Eastern Sierra Nevada hillside.

The large grove of which these trees are a part is one that I’ve photographed for a long time. For the Sierra, it is a very large expanse of aspens, and they rise from a valley up the lower slopes of rock-strewn mountains. Most of then I have photographed them earlier in the season where the more colorful trees are mixed in with trees that are still green. But this time I visited later in October, and virtually the entire hillside was yellow, gold, and red. Note also the tall and straight aspen trunks — many Sierra aspens are much shorter.

I photographed these trees, as I often do, in soft, shaded light. The sun had not risen above the ridge behind them, so there were still fully in shadow — though the sunny edge of that shadow was rapidly approaching as I worked! Photographing aspens in these conditions reveals the difference between our own visual perception and what the camera “sees.” Looking at the scene you would say you saw colorful aspen leaves and white or gray trunks. But a photograph made in these conditions renders the trunks intensely blue. So the photographer faces a quandary for which there are several possible answers. One is to “go with the blue,” with the risk that viewers will be struck by what seems like unnaturally intense blue tones. Another is to shift the yellow/blue balance in post to produce something that better approximates the experience of looking directly at the trees.

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

Aspens, High Desert Valley

Image October 27, 2022 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

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.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New England

Peak New England Color

Image October 21, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.