Tag Archives: nature

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

Autumn Aspens, Rocky Ledge

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Autumn Aspens, Rocky Ledge
A line of aspen trees, with backlit peak color, on a rocky ledge, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Autumn Aspens, Rocky Ledge. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A line of aspen trees, with backlit peak color, on a rocky ledge, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

These trees defied one of my working assumptions about Eastern Sierra Nevada autumn aspen color, namely that the high-elevation clusters of smaller trees growing in challenging surroundings usually turn and then drop their leaves earlier in the season. I know that’s often true, because I have seen it for myself in many locations. But this year seemed different, and in places where I have seen bare trees before the middle of October there were quite colorful groves this time. This line of trees was up very high in very rocky terrain, yet it managed to produce enough color to glow like flame in the morning back-light.

This wasn’t the only location where I saw this surprising change. I’m pretty familiar with groves along the June Lakes Loop, including some that are well above the loop and only accessible in some relatively difficult ways. I have photographs of those trees from previous years, and they peaked and then dropped leaves early. Yet this year, as I drove that loop on the last day of my visit, at the end of the third week of October, the same trees were producing vibrant gold colors. All of this reminds me that while the trees tend to follow the same general schedule from year to year, each season has its own personality.

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

Hillside Aspen Grove

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Hillside Aspen Grove
Tall aspens in peak fall color growing on an Eastern Sierra hillside.

Hillside Aspen Grove. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Tall aspens in peak fall color growing on an Eastern Sierra hillside.

You may wonder if this stream of autumn color photographs will ever end. While this year’s aspen photographs will likely conclude soon, here in Central and Northern California there will still be other kinds of “fall” color into the new year! So don’t be surprised if this is a continuing thread right on into 2023. By then the trees will not be aspens — we will see maples, cottonwoods, and various other hardwoods from the urban environment, the nearby hills, and from California’s Central Valley.

This photograph features a grove I visit every year, thinking there’s not a lot left to do with the subject. But then, inevitably, I find a way to photograph it and it ends up as one of my subjects again the following year. This year I have a somewhat different explanation, as my third-week-of-October visit was later than usual for me. It turned out that conditions this year favored later aspen color in the Eastern Sierra. Consequently, this grove had some of the most striking color that I have seen in this spot, even though I was a good week later than usual.

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

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: White Mountains

Inyo Sunrise

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Inyo Sunrise
Looking south from the White Mountains toward the Inyo Range at sunrise.

Inyo Sunrise. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Looking south from the White Mountains toward the Inyo Range at sunrise.

On my aspen photography trip to the Eastern Sierra during week three of October I took one day off from photographing the autumn leaves and headed east into the White Mountains to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. It had been a few years since my last visit, and it seemed like time. I left the town of Bishop in predawn darkness, planning to be at an overlook of the High Sierra at dawn. Dawn on the Sierra is always impressive, though the photographic challenges on this morning were many. But just at sunrise I looked back to the Southeast, across the Inyo Range and all the way to the peaks of Death Valley, to see an impressive sequence of silhouetted peaks..

From here I continued on to the higher reaches of the White Mountains, an alpine moonscape of round and very high peaks, covered in many places by the remarkable bristlecone pine forest. These trees survive in one of the most challenging environments in California, at high elevations in these dry and barren mountains. At this late-season date there was hardly anyone else there. I saw a couple of cars at the (closed) visitor center, and I was entirely alone for an hour or so at the highest, most-distant grove of trees.

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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

The Urban Wilderness

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The Urban Wilderness
“The Urban Wilderness” — People climb on a rock outcropping at The Lake, Central Park, New York City.

This photograph comes from a well-known, popular rock outcropping along the shore of The Lake in Manhattan’s Central Park. I made the photograph on an October morning as we killed time before heading to the airport for our flight back to the West Coast. We wandered across the park, down the East Side to the Columbus Day parade, and then back to our hotel. One thing that struck me about this scene was how familiar the appearance of the people climbing the rocks was — I could find a similar scene in the Sierra..

I enjoy the parallels between photography of the urban and natural worlds. There’s no denying that they are rather different, but I think there are similarities,. too, and I’m able to apply my experience photographing the natural world to urban photography. It is possible to see the human presence in the city as almost a kind of wildlife — and photographing people and wild life can be challenging in similar ways. The city also presents a landscape, and the same principles that work in wilderness can work here, too. ( I sometimes think that the particular landscape in this photograph, with those ridiculously tall and slender buildings, may have more I’m common with movie depictions of cities on distant planets!)

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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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