Three Aspens, Granite. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Three autumn aspen trees standing against a granite wall, Eastern Sierra Nevada.
Those of us who have spent a lot of time in the Sierra — and the story is similar for other locations — gradually accumulate “personal spots” that might not make much of an impression on others but which we greet like old friends each year. Mine include a particular rock outcropping in Tuolumne Meadows, a particular flat rock in the Yosemite backcountry where I’ve frequently placed my cook stove, a small grove of trees nestled in a bend along an Eastern Sierra road, a high and barren lake in the Southern Sierra, and quite a few more. I’ll bet you have a few such places of your own.
This little group of three slender aspen trees set against a jumble of rocks s is one of those spots. It is very accessible, but there’s an excellent chance that if you were nearby you passed without noticing. Yet virtually every autumn I end up stopping and photographing them again. (Yes, there are other photographs of them in my collection.) They are “the same,” yet they are also different every time I visit — the leaves may be green, yellow, a combination, or gone. The light may be intense in the morning or soft and blue in late-day shadows. So I return, and I photograph them again, and I mark another season with each return.
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.
Would love to see a collage of the various photographs of the same scene over the years!
I thought about that… but didn’t have the energy to do a complete compilation right now. :-)
The location is right along a roadway, and there’s really only one place to park… and it is a very short walk from this subject.