Tag Archives: trees

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

The Aspen Palette

February 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful eastern Sierra autumn aspen groves along US 395.

This is another photograph from a few years back that I rediscovered while reviewing many, many photographs for a project that I’m working on. I made the photograph in mid-October along highway 395 in the eastern Sierra, where the autumn colors had finally worked their way down from the higher regions toward the valleys. This large grove of aspens is a fall favorite of mine. The sub-grove extend mostly from left to right across the scene, and the genetically related trees of each group seem to change colors at different times and to end up with different coloration — and when my timing is just right and the season cooperates, almost the entire palette of possible aspen colors can appear here at once. In this photograph we have brilliant reds at the bottom of the frame, blending through orange toward yellow/gold, with a few still-green trees and even a few that have lost most of their leaves.

As I worked on this photograph recently I realized that I made it at a time that seemed much different in California. The two preceding winters had brought record levels of precipitation, the high country had opened late with snow remaining much later than usual, and there was water everywhere. This October visit to the eastern Sierra came near the end of the second wet summer, and it looked like we were about to be in for another wet winter, with early season storms. Then the tap was shut off, and we experienced three years are terrible drought. These trees and others in the range are now under a great deal of stress, and the past autumn was a bit of a strange one. And now, in the fourth year, the Sierra is still experiencing far below normal snowfall and far above-normal temperatures.

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

Fading Autumn Color

February 8, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Eastern Sierra aspen trees near Conway Summit transition from full color to bare trunks

As I’ve worked on a project recently, I have been going through virtually almost all of my photographs of Sierra Nevada fall color, and along the way I have rediscovered photographs that I had forgotten or, in some cases, never really looked at seriously before. I know many photographers who have this same experience of wondering why they missed certain images when they made them, and then only “found” them much later when revisiting their archives. (I have some theories about how and why this happens, but I’ll save them for another time.)

There are some bands of aspens running up a narrow valley in this area of the eastern Sierra. I had seen them many times before but either they were not in the right condition, in poor light (their location makes light challenging), or I was unable to stop. On this particular visit I managed to find a place from which to view them, and the trees were at that wonderful stage when some leaves are in peak color but others have fallen, and the beautiful white trunks become more visible.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Central Valley Winter Trees

February 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of trees on a wintry day in California’s Central Valley

I have admired this beautiful cluster of big trees for the past few years. They are very close to a place in the San Joaquin Valley where I frequently photograph migratory birds at this time of year — in fact, the odds are pretty good that this grove appears in the distance in some of my bird photographs. The trees are on ranch land, and cattle graze all around the area, so I presume that they must be there to provide share or perhaps a wind break.

Although photographing the trees has been on my mind, I’ve usually been far too busy with the birds, and when the good light hits the trees I’m often somewhere else. On this winter day a friend and I were standing along the roadway that runs next to the farm, photographing a very large flock of geese that had settled in on the pasture. The day had started out in thick for, and while there was still a lot of fog overhead, a bit of weak sunlight began to break through just a bit. As it softly lit the trees I turned away from the geese for a moment and made this photograph.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Quintet of Cranes

January 30, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Five sandhill cranes in San Joaquin pasture land on a foggy winter day

Many years ago in college I read a book that mentioned the sandhill cranes and which spoke of them almost reverentially. At that time I was largely uninterested in things like birds (with the possible exception of egrets) and even less interested in flatland things — my interests were in the mountains and the higher the better. But somehow the existence of these birds stuck in my mind, even though I really had no idea what they were. Then, not all that many years ago, when chance led me to go see the migratory birds of California’s Central Valley, it was the cranes that were my object — a friend had told me about a crane refuge, and that was the sum total of my knowledge of the birds, so that’s where I went. The cranes were, in a sense, my gateway drug to developing a serious interest in all of the birds that show up in California in the winter.

In the last few years I have photographed the birds extensively, and I’m becoming more fond of the cranes with their unusual and striking call (often heard while the birds are unseen), their low and level flight, propelled by slowing flapping wings, the striking difference between their beautifully graceful forms in flight and their rather ungainly appearance on the ground. This winter there have been a larger number of cranes at the location where I often photograph, and on this visit the numbers were quite impressive. As I came around the far end of the place, there were several small groups of them right on the gravel road I was traveling on. I slowed, got my camera ready, and knew that they would soon take off, probably providing an opportunity to photograph them in flight. They did fly, but not far, and I stopped and photographed this group against the green of the pasture, and the slightly fog muted light on the trees of this flat landscape.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: trees

The Aspen Palette

Fading Autumn Color

Central Valley Winter Trees

Quintet of Cranes

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