Tag Archives: tree

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

Aspen Grove, Filtered Light

October 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Gentle light filters to the forest floor within an autumn aspen grove near the south fork of Bishop Creek.

This is yet another of my familiar and favorite aspen groves in the south fork of Bishop Creek Canyon. Despite the fact that the frame is completely filled with trees in this photograph, the grove is not all that large, being a lot longer than it is thick. Behind me there is a gravel road and then a creek, and at the far edge of these trees the landscape abruptly opens up to talus slopes leading towards tall peaks to the south.

I like this spot for several reasons. For one thing, it is a bit off the beaten path since you have to leave the main road in a not-that-obvious spot and then follow a one-lane dirt road that winds through the trees. In addition, there is nothing obviously special or scenically attractive about this exact spot – the first time I stopped in this exact location is was primarily because there was a wide spot along the dirt road to park my car! This is another of those aspen groves that consists of densely packed and rather small and spindly trees. The trees are close enough together that it is actually rather difficult to walk among them, and I had to twist and turn and duck to get into this spot.

Partly because of the filtered light and the density of the trees, and partly because I shot with a very wide-angle lens, it seems like the edge of the grove is a long ways off and quite indistinct. By the point at the edge – which is probably just barely visible in a print – the detail of trunks and branches and leaves is so dense that the boundary is very hard to see.

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

Autumn Foliage, Pond, Conway Summit

October 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon sunlight strikes fall foliage surrounding a small pond in the eastern Sierra Nevada at Conway Summit.

As is perhaps obvious from the photograph, the sky was not entirely unobscured when I made this series of photographs of the large aspen groves at Conway Summit in the eastern Sierra Nevada in the middle of October. The changing light was an asset in that it had the potential to highlight elements of the scene and de-emphasize others, and that it was constantly changing. But it also meant that at some points the scene was so flat as to be uninteresting. In other words, I had to stand around a lot, waiting for the light to suddenly appear, only to go away a moment later.

I had been watching this small pond, surrounded by aspens and brush and reflecting the sky, for some time. I wanted just the right side light to illuminate the trees and brush, but to also get something to happen on the more distant rolling hills. At one point beautiful light had lit up the foreground grove… but it had left the closest brush in shadow. At other points the more distant hills picked up interesting light… while the grove remained in shadow. Here I had a few moments of slightly cloud-diffused light on the grove (though I could have wished for a bit more on the trees at right) and brush, along with a beam of light picking up one of the more distant groves and the slanting ridge line in front of it.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Thicket, Bishop Creek

October 21, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Bright yellow autumn leaves festoon a dense aspen thicket along Bishop Creek near South Lake, California.

At the right point during the aspen season there are so many potential photographic “targets” that it can be almost overwhelming. In this general area along the south fork or Bishop Creek, there were many stands of aspens that were at or just past their color peak. I knew of this row of trees that follows the course of the stream and which is accessible by way of a short gravel road that takes off from the main road – I had photographed them in slightly less interesting conditions last year. This particular little loop road has a number of potential aspen subjects, but this year when I arrived it seemed like the most interesting trees were in this spot near where the side road starts.

I’m intrigued by densely packed trees, so dense that the white trunks, yellow leaves, and the various sized branches can grow together and almost completely fill the space within the grove. This little thicket seemed about as close to exactly what I was looking for as anything else I saw along those lines this year. By shooting at an angle across the line of trees, the light hit their trunks from the left side of the frame, and the depth of the grove was accentuated just a bit. With so much detail to work with it can be a bit hard to find a composition that isn’t overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail, so here I looked for a section of the grove where the closely spaced white trunks gave some shape and direction to the scene.

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

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow

October 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Time to share aspen photos again! Each fall when the aspens change colors I head to the eastern Sierra to go aspen hunting! I made my first foray of the season this past weekend. I visited a number of the usual places – Bishop Creek, McGee Creek, Rock Creek, and Lee Vining Canyon. I’ve come to think that every aspen color season has a personality, defined by how and when and with what intensity the color appears, along with the related issues of the changing weather.

This year I think (from what I’ve heard) that the higher elevation trees were just changing colors about a week ago… before a strong early season storm came across the Sierra, dropping temperatures and quite a bit of snow. Over the weekend I saw up to about one foot of snow in places, which is an unusual amount for so early in the season. The aspen color was not exactly astonishing, and I think that the weather may be at least partially to blame. It seems that many of the mature colorful leaves were knocked down by the storm, and others that might now be colorful instead turned black and brown. While there was some interesting color, in many places I saw trees with leaves missing or trees that were almost fully still green.

The good news to take away from this is that since the lower elevation trees are still very green, there should be some fine aspen color very soon.

But I’ve often thought that a single leaf can be enough to make a photograph, and sometimes the single leaf can make a more effective image than a huge, colorful grove spanning many acres. So when I find that the color isn’t what I expected, one response is simply to look harder. As I walked along the road that passes North Lake, many of the subjects that I might have expected to photograph were nowhere to be seen. There were not large, spectacularly colorful trees. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground. So I looked harder… and one of the subjects I noticed was this single, small branch full of intensely colorful leaves lying on the snow.

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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

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