Tag Archives: travel

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

East Carson River, Autumn

October 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fall colors along the canyon of the East Carson River, California

Aspens are most certainly not the only sources of autumn color in the Sierra Nevada. There are many bush-like plants that can be quite colorful, such as the willows that may line high elevation creeks, and in the lower places along rivers cottonwood trees produce beautiful color just a bit later than the aspens.

This photograph was made along a section of the East Carson River not far from the tiny town of Markleeville in Alpine County, one of the least populated areas in the state. In this general area there is a transition from the higher country around the Sierra crest toward the high desert east of the range where rivers like this one end up. As I drove up the highway alongside the East Carson it was still early morning and shadows filled the bottom of the river canyon, where colors came from brush, cottonwoods, reflected blue sky and warmer colors reflected from higher canyon walls.

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Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

East Madison Street

October 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon light on East Madison Street, Chicago

We had been in roughly the Millennium Park area for a good part of this day, wandering around and looking at stuff and visiting a museum, and we were (if I recall correctly) heading back toward our hotel in the late afternoon, planning to perhaps take a break before figuring out where to go for Chicago style pizza. (One goal on this trip was to have both Chicago and New York pizza. After all, pizza research is a solemn duty.)

I’ve noted elsewhere that Chicago’s tendency to combine tall downtown buildings with more open space allows a lot of beautiful light to reach down to ground level and it sometimes permits clearer views up and down streets. As we walked past this intersection, marking the end of East Madison, the late light was coming straight up the street from the west, though slightly hazy and soft atmosphere, striking the sides of buildings and silhouetting people and vehicles on the street. This was light to stop for!

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

Pond and Autumn Aspens, Evening

October 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A grove of autumn color aspens reflected in an eastern Sierra Nevada pond

I saved my visit to this place for the final evening of the final day of this year’s aspen hunt. Although I had passed by the mouth of this canyon four days earlier, while heading to another location near the start of my trip, I had only glanced in from the main highway — but I could tell, both from experience and from looking, that there would almost certainly be some good color here later on. Although the color change seemed to start on a rather early schedule this year, later on the pattern seemed to become closer to the norm. Color started high, and by the time I made this photograph a lot of the highest elevation color was going or gone. (Not all of it though — even amidst lots of bare trees up high, I still came across scattered high elevation groves full of color.)

As the color transition continues, it moves to successively lower elevations, and some of the most protected east-side canyons can hold color even longer. In the past this has often been a decent late season location for color, but I’ve also been there when the color came and went early, for reasons I could not decipher. So on this day when I actually entered the canyon for the first time this fall, I wondered if the colors that I could see along the stream where it emptied into larger valley below might be all there was… or if the color would continue up higher. It turned out that the colors did continue, and in outstanding form! The majority of the trees had fully or nearly fully changed color, with a few other trees at either end of the transition — some still all or mostly all green, and a few that had gone to bare trunks and branches. Far up the canyon there are flooded meadows, and I made this photograph at the highest of these ponds.

Morning Musings

Seeing Without Seeing (Morning Musings 10/14/14)

October 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Aspen Leaves in Transition - Near Conway Summit — Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit *

I returned a couple of days ago from several days photographing fall color in the Sierra Nevada, something I’ve been doing now for quite a few years. At first, not knowing much about this astonishing annual transition, I worked to figure out the “best” places and times to find aspen color — but I worked, as I so often do, by looking around and speculating more than by doing research. I certainly did find the iconic color locations, but my slow and personal process led me to many places that are not necessarily on the “fall color map” in the Sierra.

It also turns out that the “most beautiful spots” are not necessarily the most beautiful spots! The most special places for me are often in odd little locations that I found by some combination of accident, persistence, and guessing — and they have become special partly because of the whole experience of finding and visiting them.

I was thinking about this as I drove down one well-known road on Sunday. Continue reading Seeing Without Seeing (Morning Musings 10/14/14) →

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

East Carson River, Autumn

East Madison Street

Pond and Autumn Aspens, Evening

Seeing Without Seeing (Morning Musings 10/14/14)

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