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

Morning View of the Sierra Crest

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Morning View of the Sierra Crest
Autumn view of Sierra Nevada crest peaks in the Yosemite region.

Morning View of the Sierra Crest. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Autumn view of Sierra Nevada crest peaks in the Yosemite region.

For several years I have been exploring areas east of the Sierra Nevada, partly because they are interesting (and often surprising) in their own right, but also because they sometimes afford interesting views of the Sierra crest and eastern escarpment. I often end up out here during my autumn explorations, perhaps because they are more likely to put me in a vehicle than on foot — but also because there are surprisingly impressive examples of autumn color out here.

I have spent more than a few very cold mornings in this area, waiting in the predawn dark for the first light to strike the distant peaks. Here it comes from behind me, over my left shoulder. It takes a while for the sun to clear the ridges behind me and illuminate the valleys and ridges between here and the Sierra. The peaks in this photograph stretch from the Ritter-Banner summits to some of the highest backcountry peaks in Yosemite National Park.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Terraced Aspen Grove

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Terraced aspen groves rise toward rocky slopes in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Terraced Aspen Grove. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Terraced aspen groves rise toward rocky slopes in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

This aspen photograph is as much about timing as anything else — OK, it is about the trees, too. While subject choice is certainly important, picking the right light and the time of day to find it seems equally important. Because I knew that this place would remain in shadow much later in the morning, I had it on my list to visit after photographing a different subject earlier that day.

The colors of these trees seem more interesting to me when the light is a bit subdued, so I planned to arrive here perhaps a half hour or more before the sun topped a ridge behind the grove and turned up the contrast. I found a spot with a clear view across the valley and tightly framed the trees, mostly filling the frame with them but leaving just a bit of the background slopes visible at the top.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

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Photographs: Europe, Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Resistenza

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Resistenza
“Resistenza” — A weathered poster, with another small poster on top of it, on a wall in Bologna, Italy.

Today I interrupt the nearly-continuous stream of fall color photographs to insert another from our 2023 summer travels through Europe. This one comes from Bologna, where there is a lot of “street art” and graffiti, to put it mildly. It ranges from crude text scrawling to some quite fascinating work. This isn’t precisely street art, as it began life as a poster of some sort… but if you look closely you’ll see that there are layers here.

The poster was glued to a wall and surrounded by a frame — unlike real street art which rarely would be present that way. But do note the thin band of typically-colored Bologna wall around the central element, and note that already another small poster had been layered on top of it and that it has been defaced in some subtle ways.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Last Beam of Light

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Last Beam of Light
A final beam of sunset light falls across groves of Eastern Sierra aspen groves on an autumn evening.

Last Beam of Light. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

A final beam of sunset light falls across groves of Eastern Sierra aspen groves on an autumn evening.

This is one of those locations that I feel like I should have been done with years ago. It is a somewhat iconic spot with easy access, and I have photographed it many times. But this year’s color transition seemed to follow a different trajectory than I have seen before — perhaps due to the preceding wetter-than-normal year or possibly related to relatively quiet autumn weather. In any case, it seemed like high elevation color came a bit later and overlapped the lower elevation transition more than usual. As a consequence, the color here was unusually interesting during the third week of October, so I reserved an evening to go there and photograph once again.

My plan was pretty simple. I would first visit a nearby area where I expected to find lots of bare trees, and after finishing there I would get myself in position for this location well before the best light arrived. The plan worked, and I photographed these and other nearby groves in the low angle light before the sun dropped below the Sierra crest. As more and more of the scene fell into shadow I began to think of packing up and moving on… but then I saw this one final beam of light slanting across the groves. I had literally only seconds to frame the scene, configure the camera, and make three exposures before the light was gone. In the first the beam was too bright, in the third it was nearly gone… but the middle exposure worked.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

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