Tag Archives: red

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

Aspen Leaves, Near and Far

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Aspen Leaves, Near and Far
A group of autumn aspen leaves against a background of aspen forest, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Aspen Leaves, Near and Far. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of autumn aspen leaves against a background of aspen forest, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

At some point during almost every aspen season I end up looking away from the big views and getting up close to the colorful leaves. I can think of several reasons that I do this. One, of course, is simply that the leaves are a fascinating subject, with almost infinite variations of color and pattern that are expanded by the many qualities of light that can be found in aspen groves. Another is that at some point, to be honest, the big views can become a bit to… familiar. I’m not referring here just to the lovely iconic views that are familiar — and which I photograph, too. At some point, the giant groves of beautiful trees with bright colors and white trunks may just start to look a bit too much… the same.

I was in a very familiar location when I made this series of close-up aspen leaf photographs, a place that I’ve been photographing for well over a decade — long enough to watch it change from a usually-quiet place to one that can be just a bit overrun. This grove, with which I’m also quite familiar, was in excellent form when I was there. The leaves included almost every possible color in the spectrum from green through yellow and orange to red, with a wide variety of leaf patterns. There was soft, luminous light intensifying the colors, and by moving the camera position just a bit I could find all kinds of variations in the out-of-focus background areas.

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

Autumn Aspens, Lake, Wildfire Smoke

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Autumn Aspens, Lake, Wildfire Smoke
Wildfire smoke drifts over the Sierra Nevada crest above a lake surrounded by autumn aspens

Autumn Aspens, Lake, Wildfire Smoke. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Wildfire smoke drifts over the Sierra Nevada crest above a lake surrounded by autumn aspens

This is one of several photographs I made of this Eastern Sierra lake near the peak of autumn color this fall. I photographed it from two perspectives, both of which I had decided on ahead of time. The first was from a slightly elevated position at a somewhat different location, a spot that provided an interesting view of some iconic aspen trees. This was the second position, along a shoreline of the lake where aspens grow and there is a view toward higher peaks along the Sierra crest. Because this was a somewhat special color year, I particularly wanted to include the foreground trees with red and orange leaves.

This particular composition reveals more clearly that the others I have shared that there was wildfire smoke in the air. The distance peaks of the Sierra crest are far enough away to be somewhat muted by it and their coloration is affected by the brown smoke, too. On the previous evening, after a day of fairly good conditions, thick smoke from a fire on the west side of the range had drifted over the crest and then descended into the valleys. I was quite awful, and it wasn’t entirely gone the next morning, though the brighter light of the rising sun cut through it a bit.

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

Aspen Slope

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Aspen Slope
Autumn aspens descend from a ridge to the shore of an Eastern Sierra Nevada subalpine lake.

Aspen Slope. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn aspens descend from a ridge to the shore of an Eastern Sierra Nevada subalpine lake.

This spot is probably familiar to you, especially if you use the version of the Mac OS that used a different photograph of the feature as its branding. This aspen forest or grove — which someone once aptly referred to as the “Cheetos Forest” — is an example of something you can find in many Sierra locations, namely aspen groves that follow a watercourse as it descends from the heights. The result can be the appearance that the grove itself seems to flow over the landscape.

This grove also provides a notable example of other transitions that may take place within a single aspen grove. The color variation from top to bottom here is striking, with red autumn leaves up high, a distinct orange band in the middle, and then yellow/gold trees as the trees fan out just above the lake. The size of the trees also evolves within the grove from very small “scrub aspens” higher up to larger (though still not gigantic) trees lower down.

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

Autumn Aspens, Eastern Sierra Lake

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Autumn Aspens, Eastern Sierra Lake
Faint wildfire smoke and fall aspen color around an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake.

Autumn Aspens, Eastern Sierra Lake. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Faint wildfire smoke and fall aspen color around an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake.

Along the same lines as another photograph I recently wrote about, this one is an alternate framing of a scene that I previously shared in a landscape mode photograph. (For folks unfamiliar with this terminology, “portrait” mode is taller than it is wide and “landscape” mode is wider than it is tall.) When I wrote about the decision to create two versions of such a scene I proposed two reasons for doing so. First, I cannot always say with certainty which formatting is better. Second, clients (especially in the publishing world) are often quite specific about which they need, so it makes sense to have both if possible.

There is another practical factor at work in this case, too. Before I went to this spot I had a fairly specific idea of the camera position I wanted to use and of how I wanted to incorporate the red foreground trees with the lake, the more distant colorful aspens, and the higher mountains. So I got their very early — early enough that I took a headlamp when I walked to this spot — and prepared to work from more or less the same spot as the light evolved. And it evolved a lot on this morning. Before sunrise there was abundant wildfire smoke floating around and the scene was quite muted and not what I hoped for. Initially I had decided to let the distant part of the scene go and instead focus on the closer portions less affected by the smoke, but as the sun came up it cut through some of the haze. All of this meant that as I worked from this fixed location, waiting for the right light to evolve, and I had plenty of time to try different camera orientations and other small modifications of the composition and framing.

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.

Blog | About | 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.