The late-day light on autumn aspens is a fleeting thing, especially here along the east slope of the Sierra Nevada where peaks tower to the west. Over the years I have become familiar with the rhythms of this particular spot. I know that the best light happens during the half hour (or less) before the sun drops behind those peaks. So I arrive a bit early, pack a long lens, and prepare for a half hour or so of intense photography.
Continue reading Aspens and Distant Mountains
Transition zones in the mountains fascinate me — places where one sort of landscape runs into another. In this photograph from the Eastern Sierra Nevada, aspens extend across high desert sagebrush terrain and right into the lowest conifer forests. The demarcation between sagebrush and forest is fairly sudden, but the aspens live in both.
Decades ago my entire notion of the Sierra Nevada revolved around the forest and alpine zones. For that reason, and because I usually approached the range via its gentle west slope, I did not know about this high desert terrain. It is possible that the first time I encountered this zone was when exiting on the east side after a long walk in the high country — and it was a shock to me.
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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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Well, I thought that I had shared the last of this fall’s Sierra Nevada aspen photographs. But then I took another look at my raw files and decided that a few more were worth working up. This is one of a set of four in that group. It features one of the steep canyons that rise along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra. There is a row of cottonwood trees in the foreground and larger groves of autumn aspens far up the canyon.
You can’t tell from the photograph, but it was almost impossible to make pictures here doe to high winds. I had parked along a rough gravel road and was alternately making photographs and cowering behind my vehicle as gusts swept through. Between that wind storm and the snow that came in a few days later it was a tricky year for aspen photography in the Sierra.
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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
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.
The light in this location is unusual for the Sierra — for geographic reasons that I’ll explain below. This forest of autumn aspen trees is on the east slope of the range, at what I think of as a middle elevation. Here the high desert sage country meets aspens and a few conifers, then transitions as the terrain rises until the forest is mostly conifers. The shallow angle and steady rise let us view one of the bigger aspen stands in the Sierra.
About that special geography… In many places the eastern front of the Sierra is quite steep, and some of the most precipitous mountain faces in the range are along this side. But in this location the rise is more steady and gentle and it begins at a higher elevation. Consequently, late in the day when I made this photograph the light streaming between peaks to the west comes in at about the same angle as the slope — and long shadows and beams of late-day sunlight spread across the landscape.
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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