Tag Archives: hills

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

A Tree Revealed

Image December 26, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The branches of a winter oak tree, with only a few autumn leaves remaining.

This tree stands alongside a trail that I’ve hiked for years, one that runs up a little valley in the oak-grassland hills south of the San Francisco Bay. I have hiked here in all seasons for decades, but I think winter is still my favorite on this route. On Christmas Eve Day, it was sunny and pleasantly cool, with haze muting the light a bit. I approached this tree from the other side, and didn’t see the color of the leaves until I looked back it after passing.

It might surprise people from other parts of the country, but quite a few trees around here still have their leaves, either because they never drop them or because, like this oak, they manage to hang onto them all the way into the new year. While this oak still has a few leaves, glowing in the sunlight, most of them have fallen, revealing the silhouette of the trees branching structure.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Winter Haze, Dormant Oak

Image December 24, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large oak tree backed by haze-obscured winter hills.

On a Christmas Eve when large sections of the country are freezing and dealing with blizzard conditions, it might seem almost cruel to share this Christmas Eve Day photograph from here in the San Francisco Bay Area, made on a brief hike in our local hills earlier today. In fact, I was wearing short sleeves. On the other hand, perhaps some of you would like to be distracted by a scene from a warmer, drier place?

This scene, odd as it may seem to people who aren’t from here, is typical of winter in this part of the West. The trees lose their leaves, though later than in other parts of the country, but then winter grasses begin to grow. The period from now through the next four or five months is our green season. Today the atmosphere was hazy, and the backlight made it luminous.

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

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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: New England

Lake and Sky, New Hampshire

Image December 1, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

You may have seen a different version of this scene rendered in black and white — I posted it not long after our return from photographing New England fall color this year. During the first days of our visit we photographed in the iconic Kancamagus Highway region between Concord and Lincoln — and it was, as predicted, quite spectacular… and quite crowded. But then we explored a bit more widely, and we stopped to photograph this lake on a long loop that took us much farther north in New Hampshire.

There’s one other semi-notably thing about this photograph — I made it on an iPhone 14. I’m not giving up my Big Boy Cameras any time soon, but on this trip I played around with using the iPhone to capture some subjects — quick panoramas, record shots, photographs after dark. In a few cases, in addition to setting up the big camera and tripod, I put the iPhone in raw-capture mode and made a few photographs just to see what it could do. The answer? Quite a bit!

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 Lake, New Hampshire

Image November 25, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Since this year’s New England visit for fall photography was our first, we decided to combine some sure-bet locations with enough time to go out and explore. Our sure bet was in New Hampshire’s White Mountains region, and it was as spectacular as the descriptions suggested. With the help of good luck and good advice, we managed to be there at exactly the peak of fall color. After our first day visit to an obvious, iconic location, we started to push out the boundaries a bit, turning up various roads that took us elsewhere, and discovering interesting things in the process.

We stopped at this lake during a long, looping drive that took us further north. The tall ridges of the White Mountains aren’t seen here — this is a region of rolling hills that is appealing in a different way. We stopped at this lake because it provided open views and the water came right up to the roadway. Once we got out and went to work we saw more ways to photograph it. In addition to the obvious nearby trees and the reflection of those trees and the sky, the distant hills are also blanketed by autumn colors.

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