Despite experiencing a couple of brilliant sunrises on our New Year’s photo jaunt, I had not shared any intensely colorful sunrise photographs. It is time. We arrived here in foggy pre-dawn darkness on New Year’s Day, assembled our gear, and headed out on a network of levee roads through wetlands terrain. Before long we came to a spot where the fog had thinned and we had a clearer view to the east. We stopped and photographed the landscape and the intense pre-sunrise sky.

The experience of being out here before sunrise is profoundly removed from our day-to-day experience. Here time moves slowly or even seems to stop. The tule fog thins, leaving behind a faint, soft mist. Flocks of geese and cranes rise and circle, their cries echoing across the landscape. The light gradually increases in the eastern sky and here the outline of the distant Sierra Nevada is visible along the horizon.

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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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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