Tag Archives: north

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Car, Blue Building

October 25, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A red car waits in front of a blue Chicago building

This was a surprise grab shot near the end of a day of photographing, as we walked back to our Chicago hotel to get ready to go out for dinner. Most of the surroundings were not terribly conducive to photography at this point, being in the middle of a very neat and tidy hotel and business area, but here the organized forms seemed right for a photo, with the perfect vertical columns of blue shaded light and the single spot of red from the car parked in the driveway and, if you look closely, a single person in front of the car.

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

Old Tree and Autumn Color, Sierra Nevada

October 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An old tree stands above an eastern Sierra Nevada valley full of autumn aspen color

I got a somewhat late start on first day of this year’s trip to the Sierra to photograph the annual aspen color transition. The plan was to begin in the Tahoe area, since I needed some photographs of that region, and to then work my way down the east side of the range as far as Bishop. This was to be a somewhat complicated trip, since I’m concurrently working on a number of projects, not all of which are related to this photography! For this reason and others, I wasn’t able to leave early in the morning like I usually do, but I figure that this would still get me to some of the good aspen areas by the late afternoon hours of good light.

I went into the Sierra on highway 88 and climbed toward the Sierra crest at Carson Pass. Although the west side of the crest isn’t typically the best place to look for aspens, this pass is a bit of an exception, and I saw my first colorful autumn aspens well before the pass. There were more and more of them as I got closer to the pass, and I stopped to photograph some of them in the good light from the west. Before long I crossed Carson Pass and started down the east side toward Hope Valley, an area with lots of aspen trees. My first stop was not far below the pass, where I found this weathered old roadside tree standing high above the upper valley, where aspens were changing color in the background.

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

Aspen Tree in Transition

October 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen tree with leaves beginning to change from green to yellow

This fall I think I hit the timing just about perfect for aspen color, as I visited areas between Lake Tahoe in the north and Bishop Creek Canyon to the south. The colors were generally intense in the middle elevations, not completely gone yet at higher elevations, and beginning to come on strong down lower, where the aspens mix with cottonwoods and other foliage. By moving a bit north or south, or to higher/lower elevations, I was able to find just about every stage of the fall aspen color transition, from groves that were still green, though every phase of intermediate color, to bare trees that had already lost their leaves.

I was also reminded, yet again, that the specific spots you go to find Sierra fall color probably don’t matter as much as staying alert, thinking about the conditions, and watching for color wherever you happen to be. Yes, there are a few especially notable places. But it turns out that there are absolutely wonderful trees to photograph almost anywhere you travel at this time of year. This tree is perhaps a case in point. I was, in fact, in one of the prime aspen color areas near Lake Tahoe. However, on this evening, when the sun was dropping behind ridges and the light was softening, I simply happened to pull over at a wide spot in the road near some creek. I got out of my car to look at the trees, which were much like the trees filling the rest of this long valley, and it happened that one of them exposed the skeleton of its branch system against a background of mostly green leaves that were just starting to change. I’m quite certain that it would be nearly impossible for me to find this particular tree again — but why would I? It is just one of the uncountable trees in the range, and everywhere among them there are beauties to be photographed.

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Morning, Riverwalk

October 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two men on the Chicago Riverwalk in the early morning

Let me begin by telling a story on myself. The last time I was in Chicago, which was some years back, I was there for a conference related to my work as a college faculty member. I flew in to town, went straight downtown, and spent three or four days engaged almost entirely in conference stuff at the hotel, mostly eating there with the exception of one dinner out in a place I’m sure I could not find my way back to. It was November, and at one point I thought I would go out for a walk. Silly California boy! I believe that I walked out one hotel doorway and made it as far as the next one before the cold and wind convinced me to think of a different activity. The point of all of this is that I really did not see the city and, in fact, I was so unaware that I managed to get my directions off by about 90 degrees.

This has happened to me elsewhere, most notably in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. I normally have a very good sense of direction, but when I arrive at Tuolumne, to this day my world rotates (incorrectly) by 90 degrees. In the case of Chicago, the problem for me was that I got the idea that the Chicago River headed through town in a southerly direction — and, as any Chicagoan knows, that is absurd… it goes east. Perhaps if I had actually gone out and walked the Chicago Riverwalk, like these two guys, on that earlier visit I would not have spent the first day or so of this visit trying to rotate my mental map by 90 degrees!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north

Red Car, Blue Building

Old Tree and Autumn Color, Sierra Nevada

Aspen Tree in Transition

Morning, Riverwalk

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