Winter Wetlands. San Joaquin Valley, California. January 1, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Ponds and trees on a winter morning in the San Joaquin Valley

This is a very familiar spot to me — and probably to some of my friends as well. We often pass through this area while photographing in the San Joaquin Valley, usually looking for migratory birds (and often in very dense fog!). This is a landscape of farmland, interspersed by ponds, in and area of the valley through which large rivers travel — or traveled, until the waterways were “managed” for agricultural and other uses. There are trees, too, though they are often widely separated from one another or else arranged in long rows along roads and property lines.

There are a few birds in this photograph — you may see them on the water if you look closely — but it is more about the landscape. Here it consists of (mostly) those ponds, divided by low levees on which grasses and other plants grow and an occasional tree takes root.

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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