Images

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Tanker 540

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Tanker 540
A tanker trailer parked in an industrial area.

Tanker 540. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tanker trailer parked in an industrial area.

With this photograph I take a little detour away from the recent Sierra Nevada fall color photographs. (Don’t worry — there are more to come!) This subject is about as far away from those colorful photographs as possible, I think. During this pandemic period I walk a lot, every day if possible, and sometimes quite a few miles. The walks take me into lots of places in a two to three mile radius from where we live, and this includes quite diverse areas ranging from a small downtown to wealthy residential neighborhoods to old areas of the city and even some industrial zones.

This photograph comes from the latter — an old industrial area now surrounded by more urban areas, with its edges gradually being chewed away by condo developments and other kinds of revitalization. Walking down a street near a plant that supplies materials for building roads, I passed several of these black trailers parked by this old concrete building. The trailer itself seemed interesting, but so did the building and the angled shadows of overhead utility wires.

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

Two Red Leaves

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Two Red Leaves
A pair of very red autumn aspen leaves in a grove in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Two Red Leaves. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A pair of very red autumn aspen leaves in a grove in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

This pair of leaves reminds me a bit of the photograph on the cover of my book, California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra. Like that photograph, this one was made while getting “up close and personal” with autumn aspen leaves, wandering around inside of a very colorful grove in the Eastern Sierra.

Although my opportunities to photograph fall color this year were limited by wildfire conditions and the challenges of traveling during the pandemic, I did get to the “East Side” for a few productive days. In fact, given the challenges while I was there (which I have described in other recent posts) I’m actually pretty happy with the results. It certainly helped that I managed to arrive at peak color at the location where I ended up, and that this year seemed to produce much more colorful trees than usual, with lots of orange and red colors.

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.

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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

Aspen Leaves, Autumn Color

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Aspen Leaves, Autumn Color
Eastern Sierra Nevada aspen leaves at their peak of fall color.

Aspen Leaves, Autumn Color. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Eastern Sierra Nevada aspen leaves at their peak of fall color.

Most of the time I tend to treat aspen trees as part of the larger landscape, perhaps with a grove or a few trees as the subject, or even including some trees of a larger scene. But every so often I get the urge to wander inside a grove and photograph individual leaves up close. I spent an hour or so doing just that at an Eastern Sierra grove that was full of leaves spanning the full spectrum of aspen color, from green through yellow and orange to red.

I photographed the subjects in this series using a handheld camera and a macro lens. (Typically I would use a tripod and put a zoom lens on the camera.) By shooting handheld I was able to explore a wide range of composition spontaneously. That is useful with this subject since even very small changes in camera position can produce entirely different juxtapositions of foreground leaves and the beautiful blur of background color and light.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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.

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

Autumn Aspens, Brush, and Talus

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Autumn Aspens, Brush, and Talus
A row of colorful autumn aspen trees standing between alpine willows and talus, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Autumn Aspens, Brush, and Talus. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A row of colorful autumn aspen trees standing between alpine willows and talus, Eastern Sierra Nevada.

These trees grow in an area widely regarded as iconic for fall color photography in the Sierra Nevada, though if they appear in the usual photographs at all they are perhaps seen as a small element off to the side in the distance. However, they have intrigued me on their own for many years. Since the first time I visited this place I made a point of walking past and underneath them, and eventually I began to consider how they could be photographed from a slightly greater distance.

These trees constitute a segment of a thin line of trees that travels for some distance, thick and wide in some places and separated by breaks in others. In the best years — and this was one of those — they include all of the potential color shades from yellow through orange to red. But the other elements in this scene also are important to me — the bluish rocks of the hill in shadow, the subtler colors of the brush in the foreground flats, and the dark green of the widely-spaced conifers trying to gain a foothold in this meadowy area.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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.