Bright yellow-gold leaves of autumn Sierra Nevada aspen trees near Sabrina Lake, California.
I visited this small grove on a couple occasions during this weekend of eastern Sierra fall photography. I had primarily stopped to photograph a large nearby grove of very bright and colorful trees, but the arrangement of these tree trunks caught my attention and I spent some time shooting the subject in fading evening light and gentle rain.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
A dense grove of aspens along Dunderberg Road in the eastern Sierra Nevada.
If you passed by this grove along the rough, gravel Dunderberg Road you might not even think to stop – in many ways it seems a lot like many other aspen groves along in this part of the Sierra and along this road. However, I once stopped in this spot the first time I drove this road and for some reason the location has become one of those that draws me back. This time I arrived very late in the afternoon, just as the sun was slipping behind Dunderberg Peak to the west, leaving the trees in shaded early evening light. This section of the grove is remarkable for the thickness of the trees – you might not guess from the photo, but trees are not all that tall. It also is more open than some groves of this size and it isn’t quite as cluttered with non-aspen plants that sometimes make it difficult to find a composition.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Closeup of a group of brown autumn aspen leaves against a background of yellow leaves.
While I like the brilliantly colored yellow, orange, red, lime green, and golden fall aspen leaves, this color isn’t the only thing that appeals to me about these trees. I enjoy photographing their trunks, too – sometimes when most or all of the leaves are gone. I’m also interested in photographing the brown and sometimes black leaves that seem to appear after a freeze. I found this grove along a slope not far from Mammoth Lakes, and I spent some time wandering up a hillside among the trees in the middle of the day. Although this is not typically the best time for photographing the intense aspen colors, by working under a canopy of leaves and by looking for a few backlit leaves I managed to find a few shots that work. This group of brown leaves ended up being almost colorful because light filtering through the overhead trees and leaves created backlight that was a bit softer and diffused that the “normal” midday light.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Layers of colorful autumn aspen groves lead up toward Dunderberg Meadow and Peak above Conway Summit, California.
I often plan my visits to this large aspen grove on the high point of highway 395 just north of Lee Vining for late afternoon, when the rows upon rows of large aspen groves are back-lit by the afternoon sun as it drops towards the crest of the Sierra Nevada near Dunderberg peak. Each grove tends to change color at a slightly different time, and each can take on a different shade ranging from green (in the case of those that change a bit later) to golden and red and orange. This year, in this area, the colors seem to tend more towards gold/yellow and less towards red/orange, but no matte what the shade they light up in this light.
I was extra lucky on this afternoon in that there were clouds. Talk to many Sierra photographers about the weather and you’ll discover that we are not so fond of the “perfect blue sky weather” that so many others love. Yes, it is “pleasant.” No, it is not necessarily visually interesting. It had been that sort of “perfect” weather for the first couple days of this visit to the “east side,” but in the middle of the afternoon on this day puffy clouds began to form over the crest, and their shadows added texture and brought out the shapes of hills and ridges beyond the aspens.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
