Tag Archives: green

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

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

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Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn
Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn. Yosemite Valley, California. October 21, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

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

Aspen Color

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

Aspen Color. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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 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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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

Aspens and Conifers

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Aspens and Conifers
Fall color before sunrise in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Aspens and Conifers. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fall color before sunrise in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

I had visited this place a few days earlier on a separate visit, and at that time the colors were still not fully developed. At that time I wasn’t sure I would be back, since I have photographed this area quite a few times in the past, and I figured that my subsequent visit might take me to different areas of the Sierra. However, I’m an opportunist and I often make decisions about where I’ll go and what I’ll photograph quite close to the last minute, responding to circumstances and conditions. And on this morning, a visit to this spot looked promising.

Each year the color change patterns are a bit different. A spot that might be green one year on a particular date may be in full color during another year, or it might simply lose its leaves without changing. While things tend to happen at fairly similar times each year — with some exceptions — the state of the trees at those points in time can vary. For example, I have come to this spot at about this time and found the lower portion of the grove almost devoid of leaves, likely in the aftermath of cold and wind. This time the color still looked good, thought I could tell that at the lower edges it wasn’t going to last a lot longer. I as also intrigued by the somewhat unusual band of green trees still found in the bottom of the ascending gully.

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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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

Peak Aspen Color

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Peak Aspen Color
An eastern Sierra Nevada aspen grove at the peak of fall color

Peak Aspen Color. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 9, 2017© Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An eastern Sierra Nevada aspen grove at the peak of fall color

I regard fall aspen photography as, to a great extent, an exercise in timing. One element of this is, of course, to simply be in the right place at times of peak color. Aspen color is rarely static, and from day to day it changes. Just a few days earlier I had been in this same spot and most of the trees were still green. (I made a mental note on that earlier visit to come back in a few days when I suspected that the colors might be more developed.) The time of day is also critical since light variations play a huge role in the ways the colors appear. Early and late in the day, when the trees are still in shadow but perhaps lit by open sky and reflections from surrounding mountains, the soft light can produce rather saturated colors and fill the shadows with light. When backlit, the same groves might be so bright that it is sometimes difficult to figure out the idea exposure. And when the groves are front lit the colors can be greatly diminished.

Before we came to this spot we had started our day by photographing in a rather different area a few miles away. We worked those subjects for perhaps an hour and a half, and at that point I remembered my idea of visiting this other location, the one where I made this photograph, before the direct sunlight arrived. So off we went, down one canyon and then up another, to arrive at this spot where I knew colorful aspen trees would spread up the hillside in the shade. The colors were quite incredible. Most of the hillside was in full color — a lot of golden/yellow, but also shades of orange and red. Here and there a few trees where still green, and for this composition I decided to place one of those clusters of green trees in almost the center of a frame otherwise filled with wild 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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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