Tag Archives: red

Boulangerie Coquelicot

Boulangerie Coquelicot
Two people walk past the closed storefront of Boulanger Coquelicot at night, Paris

Boulangerie Coquelicot. Paris. France. August 11, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two people walk past the closed storefront of Boulanger Coquelicot at night, Paris

This will be a brief post today… I made this photograph last August on an evening in Montemartre when we went out to look for a place to grab dinner. We passed this bakery, a place that our son and daughter-in-law had told us they had visited when they were here a few months earlier, and I figured I should photograph it. The location was quite dark and I was shooting handheld, so the long exposure allowed the furtive, hurrying figures to blur 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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Early Fall Color

Early Fall Color
Early fall color from aspens on rocky slopes in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Early Fall Color. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. September 19, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early fall color from aspens on rocky slopes in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

This is another photograph from my mid-September 2016 fall color reconnaissance trip to Yosemite’s high country and to the eastern Sierra. Initially when I planned this trip is was intended to be primarily a camping, hiking, and photography trip into the late summer Sierra landscape, with the fall color being a distinctly secondary part of my plan. I would typically not begin to actually photography fall color until a couple of weeks later, and the fall color orientation of this trip was to try to get an early idea of how things might shape up by early October. Much to my surprise, a quick visit to the east side of the range turned up enough early color to make aspen photography worthwhile.

I took an overnight trip down the east side, where I camped up in one of the big valleys cutting in toward the Sierra crest, just the kind of place where the aspens grow. One of the spots I visited was this familiar slope, a place where I often photograph in October and where a spectacular range of colors appears and stretches right up this rocky slope toward the summit ridge. Much to my surprise, the central part of this group of trees had already turned golden, though it was still ringed with green trees that I knew would provide excellent color for the next few weeks.


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

Evening Shadows, Sierra Crest

Evening Shadows, Sierra Crest
Mountain shadows on the Sierra Crest at sunset, Yosemite National Park

Evening Shadows, Sierra Crest. Yosemite National Park, California. July 14, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Mountain shadows on the Sierra Crest at sunset, Yosemite National Park

Earlier I had photographed in the large meadows along the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne, just below Tioga Pass, continuing to work until the sun dropped behind the long and tall ridge to the west. As I walked back toward my vehicle through the soft light of the shadows, the surrounding peaks were still in full sun. I started thinking about putting a very long lens on the camera and photographing the last light when if finally got to these peaks and ridges.

It took a while! This meadow area loses the light early, so even though I lingered there after the direct sun was gone, I still had quite a while to wait before sunset. The intense coloration of the arctic zone peaks comes from two sources. This section of the Sierra is topped by much older rocks — not granite but very reddish-brownish rocks. By the time I made this photograph the sun was very close to the horizon and the color of the light had warmed considerable, adding even more intense color to the rocks. (Inspecting the image file very closely I learned something new — there is a faint trail traversing the upper slopes of the ridge at the left!)


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

Shoreline Aspen Color

Shoreline Aspen Color
A variety of colorful autumn aspen trees line the rocky shoreline of an Eastern Sierra subalpine lake

Shoreline Aspen Color. Eastern Sierra Nevada. September 30, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A variety of colorful autumn aspen trees line the rocky shoreline of an Eastern Sierra subalpine lake

While understatement can often be a good thing, sometimes when making photographs of Sierra Nevada autumn aspen trees one simply has to go with the colors. This was one of those times. I was fortunate to arrive at this spot on close to the ideal color day for this section of the lake. Not only were nearly all the trees showing their fall color, but quite a few trees showed the less common shades of red and orange, along with the more typical golden-yellow. These are not big trees, but what they lack in stature they make up for in color.

This photograph is also an example of one good kind of light for photographing this subject. I began photographing a bit earlier in  the soft, shaded light. This sort of light can be very “friendly” to intensely colorful subjects and to subjects that include lots of shadows. But it can also be quite blue — except here I photographed just before the sun reached this spot, and much of the ambient light was acquiring a warmer quality. The soft light doesn’t push the intensity of the colors so far that they may blow out — it tends to make the colors more vibrant, but gives a bit more control.


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 | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | LinkedIn | Email


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