Tag Archives: trunks

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

A Forest After Fire

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A Forest After Fire
A dark forest, several years after a managed fire.

A Forest After Fire. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dark forest, several years after a managed fire.

For obvious reasons, wildfire has been on my mind a lot during the past few weeks. Back in August a spectacular and extremely unusual series of electrical storms rolled across the San Francisco Bay Area, touching off scores of small fires that soon merged into three very large and very destructive infernos. Since that time we’ve lived in a pall of smoke around here. I briefly escaped — or so I thought — to the Eastern Sierra, with plans for a short pack trip… the weekend that the huge Creek Fire started south of Yosemite. Since that time the entire west coast has been afflicted by historically awful fires.

I’m familiar with wildfires in California, for one reason from years of late-summer and early-autumn backpacking. Some smoke is common at this time of year, most often continuing on into the very beginning of October when the first rains often arrive. Long ago I reconciled myself — after years of Smoky the Bear exposure — to the idea that some fire is a natural and beneficial part of the natural environment. But it has been harder to find photographic beauty in fire-scarred landscapes. This scene merges those two notions. This forest had been burned in a management fire a year or two earlier, scorching the lower trunks of these trees and consuming some excess litter. But when I made the photograph the forest was again looking quite healthy, albeit with visible signs of the fire remaining.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature

The Edge Of The Grove

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The Edge Of The Grove
Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

The Edge Of The Grove. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn color at the edge of a grove of white-trunk aspen trees.

I photographed this grove of past-peak-color aspens growing at the edge of high desert sage country on a very cold October morning — as we drove to this spot the thermometer in my vehicle read 9 degrees Fahrenheit at one point!Many of the trees in this location were past their prime color at this point, but there were still yellow leaves mixed with the brown among the stark white trunks.

The Eastern Sierra Nevada is typically a wonderful place to look for autumn aspen trees every October. There is a lot of fall color again this year, though something seems different. (In truth, every aspen season is “different” than all o the others…) It started more or less at the typical time, and there was — as still is, as I write this — good color in many places. Yet, some locations where I would have expected good or even great color didn’t produce this time. On the plus side, that gave me all the excuse I needed to investigate some wonderful out-of-the-way locations that I might have ignored in a year with great color in all of the typical places.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens, Ferns, And Boulders

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Aspens, Ferns, And Boulders
Early autumn aspen color with ferns and granite boulders

Aspens, Ferns, And Boulders. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early autumn aspen color with ferns and granite boulders.

My arrival at this well-known Eastern Sierra location was perhaps a few days too early, and the color would not really peak until three or four days later. However, even when there are still a lot of green trees it is possible to find a few that are changing colors — and in some ways the striking fall leaf colors may even seem a bit more so when there are still some green leaves in the scene.

This photograph probably looks fairly static… but it was a very windy day! In fact, moments earlier I had given up photographing in a more exposed location because the winds were so strong! This grove was a bit more sheltered, being at the bottom of a steep, narrow bit of valley. Even so, the aspen leaves are easily moved in slight breezes and I had to wait for just the right moment to find a time when the motion was minimized. There is more going on in this scene than may be immediately visible. In a sense there are four primary components: the vertical lines of the light-colored trunks, the patterns of green and yellow leaves, the golden brown of the ferns, and hiding in the background the darker tones of rocks.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Early Aspen Color

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Early Aspen Color
Early autumn season aspens begin to change color

Early Aspen Color. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early autumn season aspens begin to change color.

As fall approaches I always anticipate the color change of aspen trees way in advance of the actual event, and I start watching for early signs more than a month before the color peaks. Way back in August I typically find a few early clues — yellowing corn lilies, drying meadows — and at some point in September I find my first few yellow aspen leaves. The change begins in earnest by the first week of October, and that is when I made this photograph. At this point, the aspen trees seem to move toward a sort of “lime green” color, often with a few interspersed yellow leaves, and in the right light you can convince yourself the fall colors have arrived.

There is a useful lesson about lighting in this photograph, too. Although this scene seems pretty straightforward, there’s more going on with the direction and color of the light than you might first notice. This grove of trees is, indeed, in the shade. The camera is pointing roughly east, a tall ridge rises behind this little grove, and it was still shading the trees hours after sunrise. This provides soft light that fills in shadow details much better than direct sunlight. Look deeper into the grove and beyond and you may notice that the color becomes more blue. Light in shadows is usually quite blue — after all, the main light source is the very blue sky! But the trees in the foreground are not very blue… and there’s a reason. Behind my camera position (if we could turn around and look backwards) was a very large mountain in direct sunlight, and the reflection of that light was strongly diffused and directed straight into the grove, warming the colors and highlighting the front trees.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.