Photographing fall color in the eastern Sierra’s has never been my highest priority. In past years I’ve driven right past stands of colorful Aspen on my way to other destination with out looking twice. The past couple of days I decided to try my luck photographing this years fall color. Due to an early snow storm last week the season has been cut short with only a few stands of trees showing color like most fall color photo hunters would prefer. Although decent stands of trees in good condition were hard to come by I had plenty of other subjects lined up as a back up. Expect more photos from my eastern Sierra trip soon. In the mean time enjoy these teaser photos:
Fall Color as seen while driving June Loop off of highway 395 south of Lee Vining
More Fall Color Photos…
Bright yellow Aspen leaves, filtered sunlight and a little in camera magic
More Fall Color Photos…
[tags]Sierra, mountain, fall, color, photo, photography, June Loop, Lee Vining, Bishop, California, Highway 395[/tags]
HI, I love the zoombursts effect. Very nice.
Great blur! Love the way the sunlight cuts through all the trees on the second one.
Great work, Jim. And awesome technics. How’d you do the motion blur? Was that a LensBaby? And the “in camera magic”?? Please explain that one too!
You should come out here to Colorado during the Aspen fall colors season
Jim,
Your photography never ceases to amaze me. You are truly gifted.
Gregg the trick is quite simple. With a longer exposure (1/4 sec +) you zoom the lens in or out just as you snap the shutter. Depending on whether you’re zooming in or out you hold a little longer at the beginning or end. It takes some experimentation, proper lighting and a little luck to get a desired effect. In this case I knew I’d get a similar result but the degree to which this worked in this instance surpassed expectation. As for visiting Colorado for the fall color there… I’d love to. I was there during the fall just when I was just getting into photography, but never captured anything worth keeping. That was back in the day of film though when I had an APS point and shoot camera. I’d like to return in the near future.
Thanks Trevor 🙂
Hi Jim,
We must think alike. I took photos very similar to these zooms last year, but only they were taken up near Markleeville. I shot zooms of Aspens and moving vehicles. I think yours turned out better, however. I do have a couple of zoom examples on my blog. You can see them at http://sherrimeyer.com/Blog/?cat=55.
Sherri
Sherri great minds think a like. I didn’t realize you had the great post on the zoom technique. I’m glad you liked the photos and I’ll be sure to share your zoom post with others in the coming week. A great post like that shouldn’t be buried in the comments section of a post.
Thanks for your feedback Jim regarding my “zoom post.”
Jim,
awesome photos!. I love the vibrant yellows in both photos. I had tried this in the past but I never got the desired effect. Mi pictures just looked like taken from someone with a bad case of Parkinson disease. I think I will have to revisit this technique with better subjects like the ones you picked here.