“Dunderberg Meadows” — Autumn aspen stretch across the landscape beneath Eastern Sierra Nevada peaks.
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.
“East Side Canyon, Autumn” — An east-side Sierra canyon with autumn cottonwood and aspen trees below snow-dusted slopes.
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.
“Red Cliffs and Trees” — Kolob Canyon red sandstone walls in morning light and shadow, Zion National Park.
There are plenty of people whose knowledge of the red rock sandstone formations of the Southwest exceeds mine. But I have observed tremendous variations in these rocks as I photographed in Utah. The rock generally comes in layers that vary significantly in color and texture. Sometimes they are thick, uniform, and massive. In other locations they are filled with textured sub-layers and contain curves and cracks.
The example in this photograph is one of those massive, solid layers. This cliff is in Zion National Park’s slightly-more-remote Kolob Canyon. It is in a location where you can get quite close to this impressive layer. I made the photograph on a morning with a bit of haze. The position of the sun in front and to the right of the camera produced rim light on the cliff’s edges.
“Autumn Flow #2” — The surface of the Merced River, broken by boulders, reflects golden fall colors from nearby trees.
This is a companion image to another photograph that includes some the same rocks but in vertical/portrait orientation. The scene is an otherwise unremarkable section of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley that probably doesn’t merit a stop from most visitors to the Valley. (Though quite a few park photographers have stopped to make images in this general area.) The appeal is the combination of rocks (at least during periods of low flow in the river), the patterns of moving water, and reflections.
Speaking of reflections, they are the source of the warm colors in the water. They include the light on a very large sunlit cliff on the far side of the valley and the colors of autumn leaves in the forest on the opposite river bank. To notice a scene like this you have to look past what your eyes likely want to see (water and rocks) to see the intense color reflected in the water.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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