Tag Archives: intimate

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Autumn Ferns, Tree, and Gully

November 26, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Boulders, autumn ferns and a small tree line a Yosemite back country granite gully

For me, intimate scenes like this one define the Sierra Nevada experience at least as much as do alpine ridges and grand scenery. While those subjects are highlights, the feeling of smooth granite, stepping across half-buried rocks and through grasses, finding my way up or down a gully are the core experiences of the place. I wonder if I’m the only person who, when he starts thinking about the sensor experience of the Sierra, mostly recalls these things, along with the sound of gravel beneath boots, echoing off of the rock walls, water flowing in creeks, wind in trees and always the light.

This little spot is probably not one that would get the attention of too many people, unless perhaps they spent a week camped a few minutes from such a gully, crossed it daily on travels around a lake, and often paused to look up and eventually decided to explore a bit. A first glance told me that there was a gully. Another look and I began to see the colors of the rocks and their curve. Returning a few more times I noticed the little spruce tree and the ferns growing among the rocks. And after a week this spot become one more piece of the Sierra as I know it.

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: Sierra Nevada

Grove of Bare Aspen Trees

November 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few autumn leaves linger on a grove of bare aspen trees, eastern Sierra Nevada

No, I’m still not done with my photographs from autumn 2015 in the Sierra Nevada! This year I first photographed this grove in late September, much earlier than would normally be the case. Even then many of the trees had already lost their leaves, seemingly in response to the fourth serious drought year in the Sierra. The drought affected trees in a variety of ways, ranging from early color change to simply dropping leaves without a color change to seemingly going dormant. (Other trees that were less stressed seemed to change later than usual, perhaps in response to later warm temperatures resulting from climate change.) I was less than satisfied with those first late-September photographs of these trees, so I thought more about them after returning home and made a plan to return the following week and refine my ideas.

And that’s just what I did. I made this photograph one week after those first images. This time I spent less time at the grove since I already had a fairly clear idea of what I was trying to produce. Given how few leaves there had been the week before, I was somewhat surprised to find any color still left here — but I was also happy that there was some! Bare and near bare late-season aspen trees seem compelling to me, for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on. Is it that they signal the fine, incontrovertible end of the warm season? Or is it that they signal the certain arrival of the beauties of winter? Perhaps there is something about these bare trees standing in groups and their promise of new life the following spring? When there are still just a few colorful leaves remaining, as in this scene, somehow the effect seems even stronger.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Snag, Sky

November 12, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Old dead snags can be some of the most compelling sights in the High Sierra. They are everywhere —on the glaciated granite slabs, high atop ridges, within the first, lying in meadows. They are the other end of the life cycle begin by small trees at the edges of meadows. Sometimes to me they seem almost closer in spirit to rocks than to other living things, and some that die in dry rocky places continue to stand for a long time before finally decaying and fading away. Because they are stripped of small branches and needles, the reveal the complex and twisting shapes of the inner tree.

I came across this snag high in an area of granite slabs above a lake where we were camped. I visited it several times, intrigued by its shape and challenged to figure out a way to photograph it that did not include the surrounding living trees. Finally I found an angle that I could photograph with a long lens, tightly cropping a section of its form against the gray of a cloudy sky. In the end I decided on a monochrome rendition, feeling that it better captures the abstract from of the trunk and branches.

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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

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

Leafless Aspen Grove

October 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sierra Nevada aspen grove with bare trunks

I’ve written before that this has been a very strange fall color season in the Eastern Sierra, and this photograph might be an example. Although the photograph was made very near the beginning of October, typically the time that the peak colors are arriving, this grove was one of many that were already completely devoid of autumn leaves. After spending some time in a very colorful area much further south along the eastern slopes of the Sierra, I decided to head back to the San Francisco Bay Area over a couple of passes that cross the range much further north. Near the top of one of these passes there is a vast open area that holds many large aspen groves, and I had hopes of photographing some color here late in the day.

I arrived to find a beautiful scene — high, open sagebrush country with clouds moving quickly across the landscape and creating changeable light. But the aspens were pretty much spent. I pulled off the main road at a place I know well, and took a short detour down a little gravel road toward the edge of groves where there are some very large trees. Here I found the trees, alright, but the leaves were gone. Fortunately, I like aspen groves in almost any condition — with bare branches, with new spring growth, with colorful autumn leaves, in snow — so I went to work photographing the dense patterns of closely spaced aspen trunks in the soft late-day light, muted even further by clouds.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: intimate

Autumn Ferns, Tree, and Gully

Grove of Bare Aspen Trees

Snag, Sky

Leafless Aspen Grove

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