Tag Archives: mono

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

Aspen Grove, Spring

January 24, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light filters through an eastern Sierra aspen grove on a spring morning.

I often photograph the eastern Sierra aspens when they change colors in the fall, but these groves are appealing in every season – whether bare branches in snow, with green leaves quaking in the summer breezes, turning gold in fall, or with new leaves emerging in late spring.

I photographed these on one of those late-spring days. I had been up much earlier to photograph another subject elsewhere, and then returned to my camp site a bit later in the morning. This is a camp that I often use when photographing in the area east of Yosemite, so I know its surroundings quite well. The area is full of aspen trees, an there are a few small groves along a nearby section of the road that I often walk to. On this morning I stopped on my way back from that other place, just pulling over to the side of the road to shoot as the morning sun light was just arriving at this grove as the sun rose above the surrounding peaks.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Frozen Pond and Sierra Nevada Range, Owens Valley

November 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The snow-dusted eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada reflected in the surface of a frozen pond on the high desert of Owens Valley, California.

On a very cold early October morning this year I ended up driving out into Owens Valley toward the Owens River after I spotted some interesting morning fog while driving out of Mammoth Lakes on highway 395. Although I had started out with the intention of photographing aspens, when I saw the fog I changed my plans and decided to leave the aspen photography for later. I first drove to a small lake where I have photographed several times in the past, a lake that provides very still water at sunrise and great reflections of the peaks of the Sierra crest which were covered with the snow from a series of early season storms.

After sunrise I decided that I was finished at that lake, so I got back in the vehicle and went exploring on some gravel roads that wander around in the general area of Hot Creek and Owens River. At first I aimed for some ground fog-covered areas that I had spotted earlier, and for a section of creek where the warm water seems to frequently create interesting fog on cold mornings. I arrived at this creek, took a look around, and decided that it wasn’t quite what I wanted to photograph, so I kept driving, ending up on some roads I had not visited before. As I crossed one long flat area of rangeland I passed this mall frozen pond, drove a bit further, and then turned around to come back and photograph it with the early morning – but no longer dawn – like on the snow-covered peaks just south of Mammoth.

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

Autumn Foliage, Pond, Conway Summit

October 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon sunlight strikes fall foliage surrounding a small pond in the eastern Sierra Nevada at Conway Summit.

As is perhaps obvious from the photograph, the sky was not entirely unobscured when I made this series of photographs of the large aspen groves at Conway Summit in the eastern Sierra Nevada in the middle of October. The changing light was an asset in that it had the potential to highlight elements of the scene and de-emphasize others, and that it was constantly changing. But it also meant that at some points the scene was so flat as to be uninteresting. In other words, I had to stand around a lot, waiting for the light to suddenly appear, only to go away a moment later.

I had been watching this small pond, surrounded by aspens and brush and reflecting the sky, for some time. I wanted just the right side light to illuminate the trees and brush, but to also get something to happen on the more distant rolling hills. At one point beautiful light had lit up the foreground grove… but it had left the closest brush in shadow. At other points the more distant hills picked up interesting light… while the grove remained in shadow. Here I had a few moments of slightly cloud-diffused light on the grove (though I could have wished for a bit more on the trees at right) and brush, along with a beam of light picking up one of the more distant groves and the slanting ridge line in front of it.

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

Aspen Groves, Conway Summit

October 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon sun backlights the immense aspen groves near Conway Summit, California.

As the sun dropped toward the peaks of the Sierra crest to the west of Conway Summit, beams of light occasionally broke through the partly cloudy skies and backlit these brilliantly colored aspen groves alongside highway 395. I’ve shot here enough times over the past few years to understand how the light works here – though I admit that every time I think I understand, I discover something new! For me, the ideal is to go to Conway Summit right at the peak of aspen color, or perhaps a bit earlier when a few green trees remain, and to shoot in late-afternoon light, aiming almost directly into the sun. The color of the light coming through these leaves is almost unbelievably intense and saturated – and, in fact, is a bit of a tricky thing to photograph!

There are many attractive things about Conway Summit when it comes to aspen viewing. (There are also, admittedly, a few less attractive things, such as shooting from the edge of a four-lane highway!) The stands of aspens are extensive here, covering many acres. Because of the slightly elevated viewpoint, the observer can look down into and across the trees as they follow the slope gently rising toward the Sierra. There are actually a large number of separate groves that stand mostly in lines stretching from left to right, and each of them is often in a different stage of color development at this point in the season, with the result being that trees of almost every shade from green to brilliant red can be seen at once.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mono

Aspen Grove, Spring

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Frozen Pond and Sierra Nevada Range, Owens Valley

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Autumn Foliage, Pond, Conway Summit

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Aspen Groves, Conway Summit

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

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