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The Edge Of The Grove

The Edge Of The Grove
Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

The Edge Of The Grove. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

In a recent post I mentioned that I was almost done with fall color photographs for the year. Maybe. Sort of. But no promises. So here’s another one. This grove is a bit atypical for the Eastern Sierra, where we often see small groves of trees that are twisted and bent, and where continuous groves a tall, straight trees are the exception. I’m not certain why this is the case in “my” mountains, but I suspect it has to do with the rugged and often-rocky landscape, the relatively dry climate in parts of the range, and likely other factors. This grove on the eastern edge of the range abuts sagebrush high desert country, and perhaps the more open terrain allows the trees to get more light than they might receive in a deep valley.

This photograph differs from most that I share in that it is a re-working of a photograph that I shared a few years ago. A photograph is not necessary a finished thing, and a given version represents what and how the photographer saw the image at a particular point in time. We change and our way of seeing changes, and when we look back at earlier work it is common to reimagine how we might interpret the subject. Here the changes are mostly along the lines of “tuning up” the image a bit. There’s a slight tightening of the crop, some differences in how the colorful leaves appear, and some small changes to the foreground and the shadows.


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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The Edge Of The Grove

The Edge Of The Grove
Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

The Edge Of The Grove. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

I photographed this grove of past-peak-color aspens growing at the edge of high desert sage country on a very cold October morning — as we drove to this spot the thermometer in my vehicle read 9 degrees Fahrenheit at one point!Many of the trees in this location were past their prime color at this point, but there were still yellow leaves mixed with the brown among the stark white trunks.

The Eastern Sierra Nevada is typically a wonderful place to look for autumn aspen trees every October. There is a lot of fall color again this year, though something seems different. (In truth, every aspen season is “different” than all o the others…) It started more or less at the typical time, and there was — as still is, as I write this — good color in many places. Yet, some locations where I would have expected good or even great color didn’t produce this time. On the plus side, that gave me all the excuse I needed to investigate some wonderful out-of-the-way locations that I might have ignored in a year with great color in all of the typical places.


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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | FacebookEmail

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


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