Tag Archives: tree

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

First Light, Sabrina Basin Aspens

October 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light traverses groves of golden autumn aspen trees, Sabrina Basin

There is a particular spot in the Sabrina Basin from which I can look down into a deeper portion of the valley where the sunlight does not hit the trees until hours after sunrise. When photographing in this area I almost have a ritual I follow: begin just before dawn at a higher location and shoot in the very first morning light, explore this higher area for an hour or more as the light builds, then leave and begin the descent back into that valley – first photographing it from above as the sun begins to top a tall ridge to the east and its shadow moves across the groves of trees in the bottom of the valley, and then working within the valley-bottom groves.

This photograph was made during those moments when the sun first began to rise over that high ridge, and the sun/shadow line began its traverse of the aspen groves that line the bottom of the canyon. Here the light had reached the first trees closet to me and was just beginning to work its way back toward the further groves that were still in deep shadow.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspens, Sabrina Basin

October 21, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Aspen trees with golden autumn colors, Sabrina Basin near North Lake

I had heard reports that the eastern Sierra aspen color was not very good at the beginning of October this year, and I already know that it was an unusual season with an earlier-than-normal color change. (I had seen some early color back in the middle of September while on a short backpack trip.) People I trust and whose reports I read had visited the area shortly before I did, and some of them had reported poor color and even trees that can lost leaves at the start of the month. Since I only really had a single day for Sierra aspen photography this year I was hopeful that they were wrong or at least that I could find a few trees in good shape, since sometimes a single branch with colorful leaves can be enough.

Much to my surprise, when I traveled up into the Bishop Creek drainage on October 3, I found a lot of excellent color. Maybe I just looked in the right places or perhaps I got lucky, but I found wonderful opportunities to photograph the aspens, and in many places I found trees at their peak of color. (This was, indeed, perhaps a week earlier than what I would expect in a more typical year.) These trees are part of a well-known group that is not far from the North Lake area – the morning light just clearing the ridge to the left of this scene and the wispy clouds were pluses.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Tree, Morning Light

October 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An aspen tree with morning backlight, photographed high above Bishop Creek Canyon

I’m continuing to indulge in my fascination with back-lit subjects today. This solitary aspen tree was located in an odd, out-of-the-way spot in the North Lake area, high in the Bishop Creek drainage. I had finished shooting at the lake and in the nearby aspen groves when I got the idea of walking the approach road a bit and finding a spot with a view to the canyon far below and to its shadowed walls on the far side of the canyon. For the sort of shot I had in mind, almost any small aspen tree would do as long as it was in the right place with the right background, and you would not think of this one as being anything special if you saw it – it is small, located on a dry and rocky section of hillside, and among a few other scattered small trees. However, it turned out to have what I wanted – a clear shot of the shadowed far hillside for background, separation from other trees, a few remaining leaves, and that backlight.

Photographing a location like North Lake can be an interesting experience. It holds at least a couple of the iconic Sierra autumn scenes with which many are familiar. (You can often find workshop participants lined up along a particular beautiful spot along the shoreline.) As with so many such subjects, most start with those impressive and familiar views – and they are worthy of photographs. But it is equally true that return visits to such a place, especially when they lead to more thorough observation, turn up a lot of interesting subjects that are not those familiar ones that first attracted our attention and lead to a much more complete knowledge of the place.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Steelhead Lake, Morning

October 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on shoreline trees at Shoreline Lake.

This photograph comes from my late-season three-day backpack trip up into McGee Canyon in the eastern Sierra. This has been a very unusual summer in various ways, so it was almost certainly also my only pack trip this season. (This is very unusual for me – I typically spend several weeks to as much as a month on the trail each summer.) I have visited the McGee Creek trailhead on a number of occasions, most often while searching for aspen color, but I had never hiked more than perhaps a quarter mile up the trail into the canyon. The three of us were rather lazy about planning. At various times leading up to the trip we had thought about heading up to the McGee Lake area, possibly crossing McGee Pass on the Sierra crest and various other ideas – but we hadn’t really settled on anything specific by the time we arrived at the trailhead.

More or less while loading up the packs, we decide that Steelhead Lake would be out likely objective. None of us had been there before, and I was pretty much completely unaware of the place or more than the general outline of the day’s hike. I had briefly looked at maps, but not in any detail. I understood that we would follow the main trail straight up the canyon and then follow its curve to the left as we climbed. I also knew that somewhere up there I would find a trail junction to Steelhead Lake and that it didn’t look like the like was very far beyond this junction. (Sometimes I like to intentionally avoid knowing too much about a place in advance, since this allows me to discover it on its own terms when I get there.) The first portion of the hike was much as I imagined, except that I was surprised to find that there were extensive aspen groves and that they were already changing colors. There was one bit of surprise when the junction to Steelhead Lake turned out to be further up the trail than expected. However, the biggest surprise – and not quite the happiest one – was that what looked like a short journey up this side trail to the lake turned out to be a very, very steep climb! In any case, the lake itself turned out to be a pretty little isolated place, being at more or less the end of a spur trail. It sits in a bowl that with steep slopes on two sides and, somewhat surprisingly for an “east side” location, while it gets decent evening light over the crest, it does not get very early morning light at all. I made this photograph shortly after that morning light had finally arrived and backlit some of the lakeside trees near out campsite.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: tree

First Light, Sabrina Basin Aspens

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Autumn Aspens, Sabrina Basin

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Aspen Tree, Morning Light

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Steelhead Lake, Morning

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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.