Tag Archives: range

Events, Locations

Looking for Eastern Sierra Aspen Color?

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Since this is the season of aspen color along the east slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, it seems like a good time to share a link to my article on where and how to find and photograph these beautiful trees: Sierra Nevada Fall Color Season – Coming Sooner Than You Think. 

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow - A small aspen tree branch blown down by an early fall storm rests on snow, North Lake, California.
Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow – A small aspen tree branch blown down by an early fall storm rests on snow, North Lake, California.

“Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow” Sierra Nevada Range, California. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

I originally wrote this article four years ago, in response to a lot of questions about this seasonal change, and I have updated it regularly since then. The short story is that the aspens begin to change near the end of September in a typical year, and if you know where to look you can find aspen color for the next three weeks or perhaps just a bit longer. The change starts in the highest groves of trees and then works its way down to lower elevations as the transformation progresses, with later potential down along the base of the range and in some of the east side canyons.

I have not (yet) been up to photograph the trees this season – though I plan to rectify that situation very soon! – but everything I’m hearing right now suggests that the change came earlier than usual this year. In a more typical year I would expect to see the best color perhaps starting right about now and continuing for another week or longer – but this year there are a lot of reports of high elevation trees already dropping leaves and of lower elevation areas already in peak form. If you are going this year, I would make it sooner rather than later!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

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Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest
Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest. Yosemite National Park, California. August 8, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dry summer grasses in Dana Meadow near Tioga Pass, forest leading to Kuna Crest

I think of this photograph as being, in some ways, very unremarkable. In a few other ways there are some things that are at least a bit unusual about it, though this probably isn’t obvious. The scene is one that is familiar to anyone who has driven over Tioga Pass between the eastern Sierra and Yosemite National Park and west side destinations. The Yosemite Sierra along this route is a very diverse place, but the large sub-alpine meadows surrounded by forest and higher peaks is very common and characteristic of the area. Sierra visitors are also probably familiar with the annual seasonal transition from lush, green meadows to drier, brown meadows.

So what is a bit unusual about this scene? For one thing, I shot it during more or less the midday hours. This is not typically when I photograph scenes like this one, but this daytime view is probably the sort of thing that we see most often when we are actually there in the range. The color of the meadow grass is also a bit unusual – not that this coloration occurs, but that it happened so early in the season this year. The almost complete absence of green in the meadow is more characteristic of a time several weeks later than this early August date, when typically we might see a combination of dry and lush. But this year has been anything but a typical one in the Sierra and in much of California. Last winter was extremely dry, and there was barely any precipitation after the new year started – and this was the second drought year in a row. The conditions in the Sierra, as seen here, are not unprecedented, but they are very unusual.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Evening Shower, Sierra Pond

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Evening Shower, Sierra Pond
Raindrops from a late afternoon shower mark the surface of a small Sierra Nevada pond reflecting the sky

Evening Shower, Sierra Pond. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 14, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Raindrops from a late afternoon shower mark the surface of a small Sierra Nevada pond reflecting the sky

During our mid-September photographic sojourn to the back-country of Kings Canyon National Park, the four photographers in my group were blessed with a wide range of weather conditions. The weather was never difficult or bad, but we did get precipitation on something like five of the 9 days we were on the trail. This constitutes what I might describe as “interesting” weather – clouds, some showers, a bit of wind, occasional mist around the peaks, but nothing dangerous or wild enough to interfere with photography and confine us to tents. (Although we missed it, if we had stayed a couple of days longer we might well have added snow to the experience!) From my perspective, and I’m sure that I share this view with most Sierra photographers, the thing we perhaps dread most is encountering one of those weeks-long bouts of perfect blue sky boring weather. Give us some clouds and a bit of rain!

While it is possible to encounter the first Pacific weather fronts of the season at about the time we were there, with their potential for many hours or even days of “weather,” what we encountered was more like the typical summer monsoon weather. Most days started clear or nearly so, and by midday we started to see a build-up of clouds. By sometime in the late afternoon it became apparent that showers were possible, so we went out with appropriate rain gear and protection for camera equipment. As familiar as I am with this weather and even though I’m attentive to the changing conditions, it always seems that the actual onset of rain – typically a few drops seen in the surface of a lake like this one, followed by increasing showers – catches me by surprise. On the afternoon when I made this photograph, as on several other afternoons, there were patches of open sky around and I wasn’t actually expecting rain at the moment it arrived. I made this photograph at one of those moments when the rain was barely enough to feel, but when the pattern of drops on the reflecting surface of the water provided undeniable evidence of precipitation.

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.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light

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Lake, Trees, and Granite - Afternoon Light
Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light

Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 15, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon light slants across a Sierra Nevada landscape of water, trees, and ascending granite ridges

This lake, and the rocky meadows and forest and other small lakes and ponds surrounding it quickly became one of our favorite locations to photograph during our mid-September time photographing in the Sierra Nevada range of eastern Kings Canyon National Park. This spot was a very short ten minute hike away from our camp site, and it drew us back many times over the course of our six night stay – morning and evening, fair weather and stormy. The location was so varied and detailed that there was no end of things to see and photograph.

On this day several of us headed over there in the late afternoon, and once we arrived we headed off in various directions to find photographs. By this point we were clued in to the evening pattern of light, one that suddenly and a bit unexpectedly “turned out the lights” a bit earlier than we might have expected, with the shadow of a large ridge to the west quickly sweeping from north to south across the lake. We figured out that we had to start earlier than we might typically start for evening shooting, and that we then had to watch the change carefully so as to be ready for it when it happened. By the time I made this photograph, the wind had come up and what had been smooth waters began to take on a different appearance as the wind created some surface waves. A bit of haze accentuates the difference in distance between the closest trees and the more distant trees leading up the base of the rockier slopes.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.