All posts by G Dan Mitchell

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Travel

Bavarian Alps at Königssee

Image Leave a comment
Bavarian Alps at Königssee
Alpine ridges and peaks above the Königssee, Bavaria.

Bavarian Alps at Königssee. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Alpine ridges and peaks above the Königssee, Bavaria.

Today’s photograph ties together several threads — mountain landscapes, travel, and my continuing pandemic survey and reevaluation of older photographic files. This photograph comes from a wonderful trip we took almost a decade ago. Among other things, we all rented a big “farm house” near this location for a week — with a backyard view of the Watzmann massif, the highest peak wholly within Germany. (If I’m correct, the face on the right in this photograph leads up toward that summit.)

We did the tourist thing on this day, taking the electric boats up the Königssee lake to St. Bartholomä, from which we did the hike to the Eiskapelle at the base of a mountain face where fallen snow and ice collects. The photograph is from the boat. Every mountain range seems to have a personality of its own, and here (at least while we were there) the very steep faces, the forest along the lower slopes, the large meadows, the soft light and haze, and the non-granitic rock (which gets the attention of this Sierra guy) seemed to define this range.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

White-Fronted Geese

Image Leave a comment
White-Fronted Geese
Three white-fronted geese in flight at sunset, Central Valley, California.

White-Fronted Geese. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three white-fronted geese in flight at sunset, Central Valley, California.

There’s a story I often tell on myself regarding my introduction to bird photography. I was never really a “birder” type, and I had not paid a lot of attention to birds in my photography or otherwise. One day a friend happened to suggest to me that I go visit a location where she had heard there were winter migratory birds, so I went, more or less on a whim, having no idea what to expect. There were birds. Lots of them. In a place that I had driven past for decades, completely unaware of them. On that day, knowing almost nothing about the birds, I think I identified all of them generically as “geese.” (Looking over my photographs from that day later on, I discovered that many of them were very much NOT geese.)

I’m still far from being a birder and I’m no expert on bird identification. But my understanding has steadily increased and I now even know that… not only are not all birds geese, but not all geese are the same kind! Amazing, I know! As I was learning about the varieties that can be found around here I heard of something called the white-fronted goose. I imagined a goose that was, well, white in front. But I never saw such a thing. Until one day someone pointed them out to me and I realized that it is the front of the head that is white. This group of white-fronted geese flew overhead in the last direct sunlight of a winter day.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel

Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg

Image Leave a comment
Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg
Interior of the Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg, Germany.

Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Interior of the Heiliggeistkirche, Heidelberg, Germany.

Continuing my pandemic “virtual travels” via my old raw file archives, I’m now out of London and in Heidelberg, Germany. This town is a sort of home base for us when we travel to Europe, mainly because we have relatives who live there. We love visiting (and traveling beyond Heidelberg with) them, and on longer travels we have used Heidelberg as a place to decompress for a few days. In other words, we’re fond of the place! This photograph is the interior of the Heiliggeistkirche in the altstadt section of the town.

This photograph illustrates something I learned years ago when photographing another subject that also makes impressive use of soaring, vertical space — the redwood forests of California. My early instinct with those forests was to almost always shoot in vertical “portrait” mode to try to get everything in frame. Eventually I learned that the implication of absent height can speak as loudly as its inclusion, and I began to photograph the trees in horizontal “landscape” orientation, and sometimes even very wide panoramic views. I think that the same principle is at work here, and the fact that the vertical structures extend beyond the frame may invite the viewer to consider just how tall the space is.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Seen Any Geese?

Image Leave a comment
Seen Any Geese?
A gigantic flock of (mostly) snow geese over a wetland pond.

Seen Any Geese?. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A gigantic flock of (mostly) snow geese over a wetland pond.

That’s the question. Seen any geese? A few actually. A few thousand. Or perhaps a few ten-thousand. These are among the many birds that migrate south into the continental US in the winter — these travel from the arctic via the Pacific Flyway and then overwinter in various areas in California. I usually don’t photograph them in this sort of midday light, but I decided that I do find the overall blue-ness of this scene to be attractive.

How does a scene like this happen? Initially a large group of thousands of geese is on the ground or in a shallow pond. Not much seems to be going on until all of a sudden many or all of them suddenly take to the air with a tremendous sound of rushing wings. The instigation is not always clear, but it could be a predator flying over, and I’ve seen it happen in response to things like low-flying aircraft. After the initial take-off, the flock may wheel around in expanding circles and spread to cover the sky until they eventually find a new place to settle.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.