Living in Virginia as I do, I’ve come to consider winter as a drab season without much in the way of color to speak of. Lawns are dormant, saturated with recent rains or melting snow and the trees are bare and brown. I’m sure I’m making things sound much worse than they are, but I do take whatever opportunities I have to travel in the winter.
One of my favorite locations to visit in the early or late winter months is the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California. It never ceases to amaze me how many colors can still be found in the vegetation among the foothills while the higher elevations are covered in snow.
A case in point is my image “Pastels and Aspens.” The contrast between the color remaining in the bushes and shrubs in the foreground and the monochromatic greys of the Aspen trees and snow-covered boulders higher in the image is wonderful. It’s a tiny piece representing the entirety of the Eastern Sierra Mountains. Autumn lingers in the lower elevations while winter is firmly entrenched up higher.
The orange and purple colors in the lower parts of the image come from leaves remaining on the bushes. The reds a bit higher in the image appear to be coming from the bark of whatever kind of plants those are. On a future visit, I’ll have to come back to this location and see if I can identify these plants.
