{"id":893,"date":"2011-10-09T22:42:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T05:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/?p=893"},"modified":"2011-10-10T17:32:01","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T00:32:01","slug":"just-a-taste-of-fall-with-the-quaking-aspens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/?p=893","title":{"rendered":"Just a taste of fall with the quaking aspens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every fall for the last several years, I have endeavored to shoot some fall colors amongst the quaking aspens of the west. I’ve been fascinated by these incredible trees ever since seeing them in person during a family trip to Aspen, Colorado where I was able to experience them near the Maroon Bells. The bark of these trees, which are often massive clonal colonies of a single interconnected root system, has a fascinating quality that makes them appear to almost bend light around the trunks. It’s as if they glow at the edges.<\/p>\n

The day job<\/a> keeps me very busy and is not very conducive doing photography trips even on weekends, and this year has proven to be no exception. Last year I was able to squeeze in marathon 860 mile road trip starting at 1PM on a Saturday and ending the following Sunday evening. You can see those photos in my <\/a> fall color Flickr set.<\/p>\n

This year on another road trip I was able to capture just the very beginnings of fall in the Sierras. By and large the aspen groves were still green, with just a few tiny bits of green and even smaller bits of orange. I visited the Bishop Creek area, heading to South Lake, North Lake and Lake Sabrina. Here are a few of the tiny bits of color I found.<\/p>\n

\"Backlit<\/a>

Backlit Green and Gold<\/center><\/p>\n

This was a group of aspens showing early color at North Lake. I liked the way the still green aspen branches framed the more yellow ones behind.<\/p>\n

\"Aspens<\/a>

Aspens in the spotlight<\/center><\/p>\n

Along the road to South Lake was a patch of yellow along the side of the road in front of a bunch of talus. The contrast was striking. There were thousands of insects flying around.<\/p>\n

\"180<\/a>

180 degrees of green and gold<\/center><\/p>\n

During this week I had rented the Canon 8-15mm f4L fisheye lens. This lens on the 8mm side provides a 180 degree field of view. A nicely curved aspen trunk seemed to invite the the curved fisheye image here. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately for 2011, this is likely the extent of my fall color shooting. Next year, I hope to take a month and head into Utah and Colorado to find some of the epic aspen groves. With a little luck perhaps I will even see Pando<\/a>, the “Trembling Giant”, a clonal aspen colony that is possibly 80,000 to 1,000,000 years old and currently is estimated to be the largest organism on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every fall for the last several years, I have endeavored to shoot some fall colors amongst the quaking aspens of the west. I’ve been fascinated by these incredible trees ever since seeing them in person during a family trip to Aspen, Colorado where I was able to experience them near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":940,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kurtlawson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}