Tag Archives: thicket

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

Aspen Thicket, Eastern Sierra

October 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fall color in a dense aspen thicket along an eastern Sierra creek

The exact location of this grove probably doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t seem necessary or even useful to reveal it here. With just a bit of looking about you can find many groves that are equally interesting all over the Sierra Nevada at this time of year, but especially on the east side of the range. I had seen this grove from a distance in the past, and once or twice before had thought to approach it on gravel roads. In fact, it is possible that I actually did visit or drive past at some point in the past. But for no particularly logical reason, on this trip I spotted it again from a distance and decided to go there and poke around.

In addition to its relative inaccessibility and lack of popularity, this grove has a couple of other things going for it. Many of the Sierra aspens tend to be somewhat small and not always straight. Such trees do have a special charm and I photograph them all the time. However, to be honest, sometimes California aspen photographers can be just a bit jealous of those groves of giant, straight and tall trees that seem to be more common in some other western states. This grove has those trees — tall and straight and towering above. In also has one of the densest examples of undergrowth that I’ve seen in the Sierra. My initial idea was to walk deep into this grove in the late afternoon as the light diminished, but I quickly figured out that this wasn’t likely given the dense bead of overlapping fallen tree trunks, thick brush, and thorn plants. So instead of trying to get through that jungle, I changed my mind and decided to make it the subject of the photograph instead.

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

Riverbank, Cottonwood Trees

December 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cottonwood trees with fall foliage reflected in the calm surface of the Merced River in late afternoon light

It is barely a month after I made this photograph, and the feeling is now more that of winter than of autumn. (Though where I live some autumn leaves are still falling for a few more days.) But back at the end of October I spent two days photographing fall color in Yosemite Valley. Sierra weather can be almost anything at this time of year, but aside from some leftover snow high up along the Valley’s walls, down below it was sunny and bright with the warm autumn light that can characterize the season in these mountains.

The main leaf color in the Valley comes from black oak, big leaf maple, cottonwoods, and dogwood, each providing its own variations of color and timing. When I was there the maples were a bit past their peak, and at least some of the dogwoods were still becoming more colorful. It seemed like cottonwoods were very close to their most colorful and the black oaks were also quite good. On the first afternoon I spent some time wandering along a section of the Merced River, photographing the cottonwood trees with the Valley’s cliffs as a backdrop and occasionally with the autumn-smooth waters of the Merced reflecting their colors.

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

River Bank and Cottonwood Trees

November 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A thicket of small cottonwood trees leans toward the Merced River, Yosemite National Park

When I first encountered this riverside thicket of small trees, I half-regarded them as a nuisance, believe it or not. My attention was focused on cottonwood trees on the opposite bank of the river and a bit downstream, and I was looking for a good vantage point where I could set up my tripod to photograph them. While I was intrigued by these closely-spaced trees and their beautiful autumn foliage, my initial orientation to them was affected by how difficult they made it to find a good spot for my tripod with a clear view of the other trees! (Yes, I did eventually find a small spot down by the edge of the water from which I could make that other photograph.)

After passing them I looked back and saw the way that the trees varied from almost perfectly vertical in the middle of the thicket to banding almost horizontally over the river closer to the bank in an attempt, I suppose, to find unobstructed sunlight. I knew there was a photograph in this scene but it was a bit tricky. Framing it the way I wanted required the use of a longer lens, but that introduced depth of field challenges. Initially I saw it as a color photograph, especially since the leaves on these cottonwoods were at their peak of intense autumn gold. However, working on the photograph later, it seemed to me that the color wasn’t the main story in this scene, and that a black and white rendition might do a better job of highlighting the varied yet related forms of those tree trunks, and still capture the beautiful side-light coming from across the river and down the Valley at this very late afternoon hour.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Box Elder Thicket, Fall

January 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense thicket of box elder trees along the Escalante River, Utah

Down in the canyons around the Escalante River the terrain varies a great deal. In some areas you might be walking more or less in the stream, perhaps wading up the center of the stream, crossing back and forth across it, rock hopping, and occasionally slogging through very wet sand and mud. In other areas, you might walk through groves of cottonwood or box elder trees of various sizes. Elsewhere you might leave the stream itself and find your way though brush or over and around rocks or slick rock. Sometimes there is abundant vegetation, and in other places you are in a world composed almost entirely of rock.

The river almost continuously twists back and forth and wind around one horseshoe bend after another. These bends seem to me to be important places of transition. On one side you might walk in direct sunlight and be warm. As you pass through the apex of the bend, if you were in the sun you are now likely to pass into shade and the canyon may narrow, perhaps forcing you to cross back and forth across the stream. I found this small clump of box elder trees in such a place. They were quite small – I imagine as a result of growing in an area that could be flooded from time to time – and they grew together densely. It is a challenge to try to make some sort of coherent composition out of such dense and intertwined growth. The interesting side light, reflected from another canyon wall, gave a bit of relief to the thin trunks of the trees, and there are a multitude of relationships to be found among their forms – they are mirror images of one another, or they twist almost in parallel – and in the background is such dense detail that even a very close look at a print shows that there is hardly a place where subjects beyond the trees are visible.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: thicket

Aspen Thicket, Eastern Sierra

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Riverbank, Cottonwood Trees

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River Bank and Cottonwood Trees

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.