Tag Archives: tree

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

Fall Aspen Trees, Country Road

October 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A narrow gravel road approaches groves of brilliantly colored autumn aspen trees, Sierra Nevada

The eastern Sierra is full of fall color during the month of October, especially in areas where aspen trees grow. (The peak color is typically found sometime during the first two to three weeks of the month, though it varies depending upon a range of climate and local conditions.) Sierra aspens often have a different appearance from that which many expect if they have seen the big, tall, straight aspen groves in places like Colorado and Utah and similar. There are some groves like that in the Sierra, but they are unusual. Here the trees seem to have more varied form depending upon where they end up growing. In some places the trees are stout and thick but also quite twisted and gnarled. In others the trees are straight but very short. Along some creeks they grow so think that it is almost impossible to make your way inside the groves.

The trees in this photograph are perhaps typical, to the extent that it makes sense to speak of “typical” Sierra aspens. They grow at a relatively high elevation, on a ridge that is actually east of the true Sierra crest, and thus in a drier location. The trees are straight, but they are also not all that big. They are not part of a huge grove stretching across vast distances, but instead form a somewhat isolate grove — there are others nearby, but they are not connected.

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

Aspen Tree in Transition

October 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen tree with leaves beginning to change from green to yellow

This fall I think I hit the timing just about perfect for aspen color, as I visited areas between Lake Tahoe in the north and Bishop Creek Canyon to the south. The colors were generally intense in the middle elevations, not completely gone yet at higher elevations, and beginning to come on strong down lower, where the aspens mix with cottonwoods and other foliage. By moving a bit north or south, or to higher/lower elevations, I was able to find just about every stage of the fall aspen color transition, from groves that were still green, though every phase of intermediate color, to bare trees that had already lost their leaves.

I was also reminded, yet again, that the specific spots you go to find Sierra fall color probably don’t matter as much as staying alert, thinking about the conditions, and watching for color wherever you happen to be. Yes, there are a few especially notable places. But it turns out that there are absolutely wonderful trees to photograph almost anywhere you travel at this time of year. This tree is perhaps a case in point. I was, in fact, in one of the prime aspen color areas near Lake Tahoe. However, on this evening, when the sun was dropping behind ridges and the light was softening, I simply happened to pull over at a wide spot in the road near some creek. I got out of my car to look at the trees, which were much like the trees filling the rest of this long valley, and it happened that one of them exposed the skeleton of its branch system against a background of mostly green leaves that were just starting to change. I’m quite certain that it would be nearly impossible for me to find this particular tree again — but why would I? It is just one of the uncountable trees in the range, and everywhere among them there are beauties to be photographed.

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

Sierra Aspen Groves, Autumn

October 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen groves in varying states of autumn color, eastern Sierra Nevada

This photograph was a bit of an unplanned surprise. (The truth is that quite few aspen photographs are just that — partly because I’m always looking around for places I haven’t photographed before, and partly because one never knows what the aspen conditions will like until arrival on the scene.) I had started my morning with a plan that evolved a bit. Up well before sunrise, my initial plan to was to explore an area of east-facing slopes along the edge of the Sierra where I knew that colorful trees would be scattered about. As I drove to what seemed like the obvious starting point, I thought about a very large grove that I had earlier spotted very high up on these slopes… and as I looked that direction I saw a set of headlights up there! That was all the encouragement I needed to find a narrow a steep track that took me way up high on a ridge from which I photographed those trees at dawn.

When I finished shooting there I took a few minutes to finally eat something and then figured that I would try a “sure bet” location nearby. I drove back down the single-track gravel route, got back on pavement, and headed there. Sure enough, there was a lot of brilliant color in this area. As I drove up the road I spotted rows of aspens at the edge of a meadow, still in soft shaded light, but not seeing a photograph there and with my mind on another subject up ahead, I kept going. Before long I was done with that “other subject” and I decided to head toward a third (and non-aspen) subject, so I turned around and headed back the way I came. As I passed this spot again, something about the light and the trees caught my attention again — mainly the soft effect of light reflected into this shaded grove — so I stopped and made a series of photographs that mostly just “show what is” about these trees.

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

Tree, Canyon, Wildfire Haze

October 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Smoke from the 2014 Meadow fire colors late afternoon light on a tree and granite canyon in the Yosemite backcountry.

After a number of days spent photographing at a higher elevation location, our group descended into one of the great river canyons of the Yosemite backcountry, where we made camp for the final days of our 10-day photographic trip. This change gave us the opportunity to shoot a number of subjects that were quite different from those that we concentrated on at the earlier location, and it also let us revisit some locations and subjects that we had all photographed in the past. While some might wonder at the notion of revisiting a place when so many new places remain unexplored, there is something special about returning to a place and learning its patterns more deeply.

On this afternoon I ascended a nearby granite ridge, from which there is a wonderful view down this river canyon as it descends toward California’s Central Valley. As is typical at this time of year in the Sierra — though a bit more prevalent than usual in this drought year — the haze, smell, and coloration of wildfire smoke was in the air. In this photograph, the smoke and the late hour produced an unusual coloration in this scene as I shot through the trunk and branches of a large tree on the ridge.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: tree

Fall Aspen Trees, Country Road

Aspen Tree in Transition

Sierra Aspen Groves, Autumn

Tree, Canyon, Wildfire Haze

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