Tag Archives: grove

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.

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

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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.

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

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

Eastern Sierra Aspens

Image October 23, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late-season Eastern-Sierra aspens in green, yellow, and orange

With this post I interrupt the recent stream of New England fall color photographs to bring you fall color from California’s Eastern Sierra. Our productive trip to photograph the beautiful fall color in (mostly) New Hampshire cut into the time I would usually spend in the Sierra during the aspen color season, but I wasn’t about to miss it entirely. So I managed a four-day trip to the “East Side” last week, visiting several promising aspen color locations. As a result, I’ll eventually have a bit more to say about two subjects: a comparison between the East and West Coast experiences, and the prospects of finding Sierra color after the middle of October.

As I post this year’s Sierra aspen photographs, you’ll probably notice that I made many of them in soft light: near dawn or dusk, in the shadow of nearby mountains, or under some degree of cloudiness. Despite my love of backlit trees, this is my favorite kind o light for photographing the fall colors. To me the colors seem richer, and I can maintain more shadow detail than I typically get in the harsher direct sunlight. I made this photograph late in the day on the east side of the range, shortly after the sun had dropped behind the Sierra crest.

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

Tree-Filled Valley

Image October 20, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A New Hampshire valley full of trees in a rainbow of autumn color.

We ended up at this location more or less by accident. We had just finished photographing an area that was on our list of places to visit, and as we drove away it was apparent that it was now late enough in the day that a long drive to another location was out of the question. Earlier we had pass through an area of extensive and quite colorful forest at a time when we could not stop. It was nearby, so we headed that direction… and along the way I saw a sign for a side road. We took it, ended up in a small parking lot near a trail across a bridge, and walked that way.

Later, after walking as far along this trail as slow photographers can go in a short time, we turned around and headed back. Of course, the return walk took even longer since the light was becoming more interesting. Back at the bridge where we had started, the valley along the creek under the bridge was full of trees in various states of color transformation. We stopped and made a few “wall of fall color” photos here before packing it in for the day.

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

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: grove

Tall Autumn Aspen Trees

Aspens, High Desert Valley

Eastern Sierra Aspens

Tree-Filled Valley

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