Tag Archives: yellow

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

Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Foothills

November 19, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful aspen groves ascend the foothills in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Indeed, I’m still going through this year’s photographs of fall color and other autumn subjects. It actually turned out to be a very beautiful fall in and around the Sierra Nevada. I suspect that the return to normal (actually above normal) precipitation had a big influence, and the contrast with the previous five drought years was quite large. I managed several trips into the range during the month of October, the prime time for most fall color, visiting the east side and also Yosemite Valley.

The best aspen color came, as it typically would in my experience, about a week and a half into October. The color begins earlier than that at high elevations and among some of the smaller trees, and then it generally works its way downward over a period of perhaps three weeks or so. I made this photograph right in the heart of that period, on a three-day foray that took me to a variety of locations. (I’ve been photographing this subject long enough that if I encounter less than stellar conditions I can usually pick up and quickly move to something better.) This spot is pretty well known and easily visible from US 395. I have photographed it many times, and now I’m either looking for astonishing and rare conditions or else a perspective that is a bit different. This photograph looks down into a group of large trees that are backed by a carpet of smaller trees, at peak color and ascending the hills toward the Sierra crest, all illuminated by very late afternoon light.

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, Photographs: Yosemite

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

November 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

I’ll start with a story about crowds, but I’ll end on a better note. :-) I drove to Yosemite Valley on this late-October weekend partially to photograph early fall color in The Valley, but also so that I could attend an exhibit opening at Gallery Five in Oakhurst — where the final showing to the 2017 Yosemite Renaissance exhibit had been installed. I have visited the Valley for years at about this time, since fall colors there typically peak around the end of the month. On this trip, my first indication that I wouldn’t exactly be alone in the park — despite there being a lot of wildfire smoke — was the extraordinarily long line to enter the park, even very early in the morning. Further into the Valley I was stunned by the number of cars and visitors — it wouldn’t have been anything special during the summer, but near the end of October? I decided to head up to the Curry Village (sorry, “Half Dome Village”) area to park where I could wander off and make photographs, but when I arrived there was literally no place to park — not the Village lot, the overflow lot, the nearby roadways, or anything else all the way up to nearby campgrounds. I was floored…

I finally left that area and found a pull-out along the roadway, parked my car near some a portion of the forest filled with colorful big leaf maple and dogwood trees, and headed off into an area where there was virtually no one else around. Yes, there are such places here, even on busy days. As I walked I spotted a number of potential photographs, but I kept going, walking slowly until I finally reached the banks of the Merced River. I made a few photographs there in solitude before turning around and slowly starting back the way I had come. I now had in mind a few trees that I thought might make interesting photographs, so I paused and poked around near them looking for compositions. This photograph falls into a category that I think of as “order from chaos” compositions, in which there is an almost overwhelming amount of detail tied together (I hope!) by some underlying compositional order. Here the darker branches and trunks of trees supply that order underlying the complexity of the colorful big leaf maple leaves.

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

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

Big Leaf Maple, Forest Trail

November 5, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A forest trail winds past big leaf maple trees with fall colors in Yosemite Valley

This was a busy day! I described it in an earlier post, but here is a brief recap. I started in Oakhurst before dawn, heading out to photograph sunrise at Glacier Point — but I didn’t make it after I became distracted by a lovely forest scene along the way. Then I photographed wildfire smoke east of Glacier Point, returned to The Valley to shoot fall color, lost patience with the crowds and smoke, headed to Tioga Pass, and ended the day photographing sunset light on snow-dusted granite slabs. Whew!

In the middle of the day I spent a brief time in The Valley before heading back to the high country. The crowds were shocking, especially for this late October date. I left my car and headed out on foot, going into an area with lots of big leaf maple trees. This is also a location where I know I can find not only a bit of solitude but also some very special light. Here the forest sometimes opens toward a very large expanse of vertical granite, and this rock acts as a gigantic reflector, casting soft light back into shaded areas along the opposite canyon wall. It was here that I stopped to photograph this quiet little autumn scene, with a deserted trail passing through the open forest.

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

Aspen Color

October 29, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen grove containing colors from green through red and orange to yellow

I have been watching this location for many years, and even this season I had checked it out earlier in the week to see how the color was coming along. During that first check the color was just beginning, and most of the trees were still green, but when we returned just a matter of days later the scene had been transformed, and most of the trees were wildly colorful. The bits of remaining green seemed to be just enough to set off the brighter shades of yellow, orange, and red.

Photographing aspen color depends a lot on the nature of the light at the time of the photograph. Midday light can be harsh, and the subtle qualities of the coloration can be lost. In fact, if the light on the front of the aspen trees they lose virtually all of their color and they can look quite drab and boring. On the other hand, photographing aspens in shadows can let the colors glow, especially after a bit of adjustment to compensate for the blue quality of the shadow light. Additionally, the softer shadow light allows shaded portions of the scene to be more visible. On this morning we planned our time to make sure that we arrived at a series of locations just before the shadows were overwhelmed by the arrival of direct sun. In fact, as I photographed these shadowed trees, the line of sunlight streaming over a nearby peak was only feet behind my camera position.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: yellow

Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Foothills

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

Big Leaf Maple, Forest Trail

Aspen Color

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