Tag Archives: trunks

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

Dense Aspen Grove

October 12, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Small aspen trees, packed closely together, with golden autumn leaves, Eastern Sierra Nevada

While the exuberant colors of large groves of autumn aspens are attractive, there is something about the trunks that is hard to resist, even when the colors may have diminished a bit — or perhaps because the colors are less striking. I know I’m not the only photographer who returns to this “take” on the subject. It is fun and more than a bit challenging to make compositions out of such complexity. Frequently I’ll stop and look at a grove, think “that will make a great photograph,” and then gradually discover that some subtle element is not quite right and the whole thing won’t work. I’m continually surprised that a subject that seems so simple often isn’t.

To a great extent it is a question of balance of several sorts. The complex patterns of trunks cannot be completely uniform or there will be no form to the image. There must be some differentiation in the ways that trunks are grouped and among the angles of branches. But too much differentiation is also a problem. There is a “just right” quality to these compositions that is hard to explain, but which I know when I see it. A bit of “dissonance” can help, too — a little bit of something that seems to step outside the predominant patterns. In this photograph that could be the diagonal branches at coming across from the right, or it might be the group of closer leaves along one side. There is also some sense of depth, and if you look closely you may see a good distance into the more distant and darker areas of the small grove. And aside from the obvious vertical lines, there are three horizontal layers — brush at the bottom, trunks in the middle, and yellow leaves at the top.

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

Grove of Bare Aspen Trees

November 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few autumn leaves linger on a grove of bare aspen trees, eastern Sierra Nevada

No, I’m still not done with my photographs from autumn 2015 in the Sierra Nevada! This year I first photographed this grove in late September, much earlier than would normally be the case. Even then many of the trees had already lost their leaves, seemingly in response to the fourth serious drought year in the Sierra. The drought affected trees in a variety of ways, ranging from early color change to simply dropping leaves without a color change to seemingly going dormant. (Other trees that were less stressed seemed to change later than usual, perhaps in response to later warm temperatures resulting from climate change.) I was less than satisfied with those first late-September photographs of these trees, so I thought more about them after returning home and made a plan to return the following week and refine my ideas.

And that’s just what I did. I made this photograph one week after those first images. This time I spent less time at the grove since I already had a fairly clear idea of what I was trying to produce. Given how few leaves there had been the week before, I was somewhat surprised to find any color still left here — but I was also happy that there was some! Bare and near bare late-season aspen trees seem compelling to me, for reasons I cannot quite put my finger on. Is it that they signal the fine, incontrovertible end of the warm season? Or is it that they signal the certain arrival of the beauties of winter? Perhaps there is something about these bare trees standing in groups and their promise of new life the following spring? When there are still just a few colorful leaves remaining, as in this scene, somehow the effect seems even stronger.

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

Inside the Grove

November 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Among the trees of an Eastern Sierra aspen grove, autumn

Late in the afternoon on this day of Eastern Sierra fall aspen color photography I found myself in a familiar place, where a small lateral road, narrow and gravel, roughly parallels are larger paved road. I like to pull off the main road here and slowly drive the short distance up canyon on the gravel road, stopping along the way to view and photograph the variety of aspen trees that grow here. It is especially nice late in the day when the sun drops behind high peaks, leaving soft, shadowed light.

I pulled into a familiar pull-out along this road, at a spot where I have photographed in the past and where there is a little grove of small trees. None of the trees seems to be as tall as twenty feet, but they grow very closely together — so closely that it is actually difficult to walk among them. The spot is often quiet — personal rather than iconic — especially late on an autumn day, and I sometimes simply pause quietly here for a while. On other occasions, like this one, I make photographs. I decided that I would put on a very wide-angle lens and then walk in among the trees, photographing them very close up and trying to capture some of the feeling of being inside such a dense little grove.

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

Leafless Aspen Grove

October 29, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sierra Nevada aspen grove with bare trunks

I’ve written before that this has been a very strange fall color season in the Eastern Sierra, and this photograph might be an example. Although the photograph was made very near the beginning of October, typically the time that the peak colors are arriving, this grove was one of many that were already completely devoid of autumn leaves. After spending some time in a very colorful area much further south along the eastern slopes of the Sierra, I decided to head back to the San Francisco Bay Area over a couple of passes that cross the range much further north. Near the top of one of these passes there is a vast open area that holds many large aspen groves, and I had hopes of photographing some color here late in the day.

I arrived to find a beautiful scene — high, open sagebrush country with clouds moving quickly across the landscape and creating changeable light. But the aspens were pretty much spent. I pulled off the main road at a place I know well, and took a short detour down a little gravel road toward the edge of groves where there are some very large trees. Here I found the trees, alright, but the leaves were gone. Fortunately, I like aspen groves in almost any condition — with bare branches, with new spring growth, with colorful autumn leaves, in snow — so I went to work photographing the dense patterns of closely spaced aspen trunks in the soft late-day light, muted even further by clouds.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: trunks

Dense Aspen Grove

Grove of Bare Aspen Trees

Inside the Grove

Leafless Aspen Grove

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