Early evening light on forest covered valley leading to rocky ridge, Yosemite National Park.
Earlier this month I spent a few days in the Tuolumne Meadows high country of Yosemite National Park, generally along the Tioga Pass Road and with hiking excursions outwards from there. My main goal on this trip was actually the hiking, but there was time for photography, too, of course! On this evening I went up to the meadows near the pass just inside the park boundaries and took some time to wander and make photographs.
Here I was attracted by the massive peak, with its reddish rock indicative of old materials that lay above the granite foundation of the range, along with the evening light and the overlapping shapes of lower, forest covered hills and the dark row of trees just beyond the meadow. In addition, I’ve hiked out into that area many times, and this view evokes memories of many of those adventures.
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.
Dawn light and shadows on an eastern Sierra ridge with dusting of early autumn snow.
On this early October morning I had a bit of time for photography before I had to start my drive back to the Bay Area. I had a plan to visit a somewhat lonely high spot from which I might have a view of aspen groves lit by dawn light, so I was up way before sunrise. I broke camp and headed out, driving some gravel roads to get to my destination and arriving before dawn. It was cold! This was the sort of autumn morning that makes it clear the summer is over and winter is coming. When I got up it was 27 degrees, but when I arrived at my destination it was 23. I put on lots of layers, got out of my vehicle, and set up my tripod and camera.
My initial subject was to be the aspens, and I began photographing them in the soft predawn light. A few minutes later the first direct sun hit the tall ridge of the Sierra crest above me and I turned my camera in that direction. As the light swept across ridges and gullies, there was a big contrast between the extremely warm colors of the rock lit by dawn sun and the deep blue light on the snow in the ravines. A day and a half earlier the first snow of October had dusted the Sierra crest. Looked at in a particular way, this photograph appears to me as an almost abstract pattern out of which the forms of the mountain resolve themselves only when I look more closely.
Late summer meadow and forest, Yosemite National Park
I missed much of summer in the Sierra this season since we were traveling. Soon after we came back to California I managed to squeeze in a few “going home” days in the Yosemite high country during the week following the exit of the Labor Day Holiday crowds. Following my midday arrival and camp setup (and a nap to compensate for my early wake up call that morning) I decided that I’d head out a familiar trail toward an alpine lake that I’ve frequently visited in the past. As it turns out I started a bit too late, and when I hit my predetermined halfway time I hadn’t made it the goal — so I just found a rock and sat quietly for a while before turning around.
Every summer, far before autumn actually begins, I see the early signs of the coming seasonal change. I missed the first hints since I wasn’t there in August. (Though I did see a few early leaves change color in Italy at that time.) But on this early September day the signs were all there. The meadows have turned that familiar golden brown color. Red bilberry plants glow in the low angle backlight. Corn lily plants have lost their green lushness and now turn brown and topple over. A few yellow leaves begin to appear on willows, and here and there it is even possible to find a few aspen trees with premature yellow leaves. Less concretely, there is something I’ve never quite been able to define about the light and the atmosphere, though it is plainly obvious to me that it has changed. Summer is ending in the Sierra, and the inevitable arrival of autumn and winter is just around the corner.
First light on rugged, snow-dusted ridges above aspen-covered Parker Bench
This is a special place, high along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada and open to the first dawn light from the east. It is also just far enough off the beaten track and difficult enough to access that it is usually not very crowded. (Don’t worry if you can’t get to it, there are thousands of other places where you can have a similar experience in the eastern Sierra.) We recently got up early enough to drive here and arrive well before sun rise. To this day, despite seeing many sunrises, I still often am surprised at how quickly the light comes and how silently. Living in a culture in which every spectacular thing, or thing that we are supposed to regard as being spectacular, is pumped up with loud music and lots of action, the sunrise comes often comes in complete silence and with little warning — you look up and notice that the light has already struck some small element of the scene, and soon you discover it moving across the landscape and quietly lighting more and more bits and pieces. I made this photograph when this first light had hit the rugged upper slopes above this aspen-covered bench, but before it had worked its way down to the trees.
This photograph also illustrates something I finally figured out about this strange eastern Sierra fall of 2015. This year the season began oddly, with very early first color in many places. In addition, many groves simply did not have leaves — either they lost them so early that I never saw them or perhaps they did not put out leaves this year. In other groves the leaves went almost straight “from green to gone,” with little or not brilliant color phase. Where this happened, I think it was the result of the four-year drought creating tremendous stress on the trees. At the same time, other climate factors thought by some to be associated with the drought also had the effect of delaying the color change of trees that were not as stressed by the shortage of water. Instead, these trees are changing later, likely due to overall warming temperatures. So far, this has been a season not quite like any other I’ve experienced. In this photograph you can spot examples of almost all of these conditions — completely bare groves, groves that have turned and already dropped leaves, some that are going straight from green to having no leaves, and even some trees that are still very green.
