Tag Archives: season

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

Autumn Colors and Morning Reflections

Image 3 Comments
Autumn Colors and Morning Reflections
Colorful autumn aspen tree line the shoreline of an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake.

Autumn Colors and Morning Reflections. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful autumn aspen tree line the shoreline of an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake.

This year’s fall Sierra Nevada photography has been challenging in several ways. The pandemic has changed our travel routines, of course. But the unprecedented wildfire season in the West has impacted photography, too. Autumn wildfire smoke has always been present here — it is one of the causes of the lovely soft light during this season — but this year large areas have been blanketed with an oppressive pall for weeks. When I arrived in the Eastern Sierra recently the smoke was so bad that, for example, I could barely see Mono Lake as I drove past it. I continued far south to where is was less awful, but it was a factor during the entirety of my visit.

The day before I made this photograph the smoke had abated a bit. It was inescapable but thin enough to let in sunshine. But late that day a bank of thick smoke descended on my campsite, and I wondered what the morning would bring. It brought more smoke. I went to a familiar nearby location and thought about how to mostly exclude distant views of the smoke-draped landscape. I decided to focus on some very red trees along the shoreline of a familiar lake, mostly framing photographs to emphasize the trees and de-emphasize the longer views.

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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Water Plants

Image Leave a comment
Water Plants
Water plants reflected on the surface of a wetland pond.

Water Plants. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Water plants reflected on the surface of a wetland pond.

In another post that I queued up recently I mentioned some aspects of the experience of photographing migratory birds, pointing out that a lot of “down time” is part of the experience — times when there isn’t a lot of action going on. The birds may be static — or missing! — and one waits. In that other post I point out that these slow times are certainly not a bad thing! The quiet stillness can grow on you eventually, and there are other things to see and photograph, too.

I’m not at all a “pure bird photographer.” When I’m in the field photographing this subject I spend a good portion of my time thinking as a landscape photographer. Even when the primary subject is a bird or birds, I often consider how that bird is part of the landscape. But I also frequently switch gears entirely and focus on the space in which the birds live… and I photograph landscapes. On this occasion I was working a wetland area and the reflections of plants in the water caught my attention.

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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

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

Autumn Forest

Image Leave a comment
Autumn Forest
Autumn oak leaves add color to a dark forest scene, Yosemite Valley.

Autumn Forest. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn oak leaves add color to a dark forest scene, Yosemite Valley.

This seems like an interesting location to me for several reasons. It is in Yosemite Valley, and in a place where many people often stop, park, and get out of their cars to gaze at an iconic feature of this place. As they do, they look right past and over this fascinating bit of forest. I do not necessarily critique them for this, as I did not pay attention to it the first times I’visited either — it is too easy to be distracted by those icons!

This section of forest is relatively dense, at least on the scale of the Sierra Nevada. Ferns and other plants grow on the ground between the trees, and walking through here can be slightly challenging as you step around this growth and the old branch that have fallen from the trees. It is also a spot where the park has applied more modern thinking about fire — in other words, the area was burned in a management fire designed to thin out that unnaturally thick growth. A closer look reveals that the bases of many of the trees have been charred. But they survived and this forest is now in improved health.

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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

A Forest After Fire

Image Leave a comment
“A Forest After Fire” — A dark Yosemite Valley forest, several years after a managed fire.

For obvious reasons, wildfire has been on my mind a lot during the past few weeks. Back in August a spectacular and extremely unusual series of electrical storms rolled across the San Francisco Bay Area, touching off scores of small fires that soon merged into three very large and very destructive infernos. Since that time we’ve lived in a pall of smoke around here. I briefly escaped — or so I thought — to the Eastern Sierra, with plans for a short pack trip… the weekend that the huge Creek Fire started south of Yosemite. Since that time the entire west coast has been afflicted by historically awful fires.

I’m familiar with wildfires in California, for one reason from years of late-summer and early-autumn backpacking. Some smoke is common at this time of year, most often continuing on into the very beginning of October when the first rains often arrive. Long ago I reconciled myself — after years of Smoky the Bear exposure — to the idea that some fire is a natural and beneficial part of the natural environment. But it has been harder to find photographic beauty in fire-scarred landscapes. This scene merges those two notions. This forest had been burned in a management fire a year or two earlier, scorching the lower trunks of these trees and consuming some excess litter. But when I made the photograph the forest was again looking quite healthy, albeit with visible signs of the fire remaining.

COMMENT OR QUESTION? Scroll down to the comment form.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.