If you follow the fall color transition in the Eastern Sierra Nevada you have almost certainly seen photographs of this grove. (Hint: there other groves like it that are less well known, and I’ll do my part to help it stay that way!) The trees descend from a high ridge along a gully, then spread out in a larger grove at the bottom at the edge of a subalpine lake. The form of the grove is fascinating, as is its color transition between the upper orange and red trees and the yellow trees below.

We often photograph this and similar groves using the vertical “portrait” orientation for obvious reasons. In this case I thought that going with the wider “landscape” format might emphasize the “spreading” effect at the lower end of this grove. You might also notice that I intentionally photographed in soft light before the morning sun arrived — this light is less likely to oversaturate the colors to the point of blowing them out, and it also spreads a bit more light onto shadow details.

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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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The grove in this photograph is semi-famous. The earliest photograph of it that I’m aware of is by Galen Rowell, and just about everyone who photographs Sierra aspens has given it a shot. Timing is everything — along with a bit of weather luck — and I arrived a bit after the peak of color. (At that point there might not be any bare trunks, but some of the foreground trees would still show a bit of green.) Rather than showing the whole thing, I decided to crop a bit and let the green area at upper right intrude into the space where yellow turns to orange.

While timing is a key to getting aspen photographs, the window is often a bit wider than you may expect. We want to arrive at the perfect moment of maximum color before leaves really start to drop. But the color transition is quite photogenic both before an d after that brief moment. Before the peak a few green trees might be part of the scene, and a bit later scattered colorful leaves might poignantly interrupt a forest of nearly bare white trunks.

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Leave a comment or question using the form. (If you are reading this on the home page, click the article title to see the full article and the comment form.

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.