Tag Archives: lake

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

Aspens and Rocky Cliff

October 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspens in full autumn color against a granite cliff in the eastern Sierra Nevada

On this morning I woke up at my 8000′ eastern Sierra camp to temperatures in the mid-thirty degree range and light graupel, or snow pellets. But the clouds looked thin, and the combination of aspens and snow is appealing, so I headed up the canyon to a higher location where I thought that there might be colorful aspens and snow. When I got there, I wasn’t disappointed — the temperature was still down in the thirties, and the light snow continued to fall… and the trees at this location were probably at their peak color of the season.

The color of the trees was intense, but the soft light of the snowy, cloudy weather intensified colors even more. I went to the far side of the lake where I know of an accessible area that is a bit higher than the lake, with my plan being to photograph these trees against the backdrop of broken granite walls, using a long focal length to narrow the boundaries of the compositions and exclude distracting objects. For intense color everything was working in my favor: the peak color of the trees, the muted tones of the background rock, and the effect of the soft light from the overcast skies.

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

Aspen Trees, Shoreline

October 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful autumn aspen trees along the rocky shoreline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake

The Sierra Nevada autumn color season seemed to start earlier than usual this year. The question of when it would start has been on the minds of many of us who chase the aspen and other color each fall, especially given the effects of California’s fourth year of drought. We wondered (and still wonder) how many trees would die, how early the color would arrive, how good it would be, and much more. The picture isn’t yet fully clear, but I think that I can perhaps make three generalizations. First, the color did arrive early — I made this photograph during the last week of September, and such color typically arrives in this location perhaps a full week later. Second, some trees have clearly been stressed by the drought — in places trees that would usually be developing colorful leaves have instead simply dropped their leaves early. Third, in places where the water situation isn’t quite as dire there are still a lot of very green trees, and they will possibly prolong the color season well into October.

When I visited this spot I already had a long familiarity with this colorful group of trees growing along the shoreline of this subalpine lake. Ironically, it was in this drought year, when I arrived at an atypically early point in the season, that I found what may be the best colors I’ve seen on them. In the Sierra the predominant autumn aspen leaf color is a sort of golden-yellow. However, there are other colors ranging from orange through read and even to some deep almost red-brown colors. In some ways, those are the “prize” colors that we look for. And this little strip of trees has those colors in abundance!

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

Shoreline Mist, Autumn

September 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog drifts above a Sierra Nevada lake surrounded by the colors of autumn

This is perhaps an example of a photograph that required me to point my camera the “wrong” direction. I was at a very popular aspen photography destination in the eastern Sierra Nevada, where early color was developing quite nicely even in late September, perhaps a week earlier than usual. There are a couple of standard photographs that almost everyone makes at this location, but since I did those some years ago I’m usually not interested in re-doing them now. (With truly exceptional conditions I would relax that notion a bit and rush right back to the standard place and make photographs!) So when I go back here I now tend to poke around a bit and see what else might be possible there.

So I started this morning by climbing to a location from which I had not photographed before. From that vantage point I saw a few other possible angles on the subject, including some from the far side of the lake. I soon headed over there and as I looked back toward my original location I saw that a low haze was back-lit along the edges of the lake. I’m a complete sucker for both mist and backlight, so I pointed my camera almost straight back into this light and made a few photographs of the grassy area along the lake’s shoreline and the trees, both aspens and conifers, rising beyond.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Subalpine Lake, Dusk

September 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk comes to a Sierra Nevada subalpine lake on a rainy evening

Near the middle of September three of us spent a week camped at one Yosemite back-country lake, photographing the lake and its surroundings every day in a range of conditions. At times we dealt with this summer’s extremes of wildfire smoke, which was occasionally so thick that it almost seemed like fog and it made breathing difficult. But each day, even on the smokiest days, the wind picked up and it cleared out enough to make photographs — some days the early morning was clear and the smoke drifted in later, while on other days we started out with murky conditions and then watched them clear.

A bit to our surprise, on the last few days a weather front came through and we had much more “interesting” weather — rain, wind, hail, graupel, and clouds swirling around the nearby peaks. On this evening the clouds were gathering — it would rain later that night — and patterns of lighter and darker clouds filled the sky above our lake. Late in the evening, as the light was beginning to fail, I walked a short distance from my tent, set up along the shoreline, and mad some photographs of this mysterious scene in the fading light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: lake

Aspen Trees, Shoreline

Shoreline Mist, Autumn

Subalpine Lake, Dusk

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