All posts by G Dan Mitchell

G Dan Mitchell, photographer and visual opportunist focusing on the Pacific coast, the Sierra Nevada, redwood forests, California oak/grasslands, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography and more. Posting daily photographs since 2005, along with articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Zion High Country, Evening

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Zion High Country, Evening - High country of Zion National Park in evening light
High country of Zion National Park in evening light

Zion High Country, Evening. Zion National Park, Utah. October 14, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High country of Zion National Park in evening light

As an official member of the I Love Backlit Trees club, I’m more or less unable to resist shooting straight toward the sun near the start of end of the day to capture the light illuminating the fringes of trees from behind. Yes, it is a repeating subject of mine… The high country of Zion National Park along the Mount Carmel Highway is a great place to find such light if you are observant and think about where and when to look. Especially late in the day – but not quite all the way to sunset – the light slants across ridges and hills and picks off the trees, which here are separated enough to allow the light to catch whole trees. (This is a bit harder to find among the denser forests of my Sierra Nevada.)

This sort of shooting provides some challenges. One, of course, is the potential for a very wide dynamic range between the brightly lit leaves and needles of the trees and the shaded areas that may be behind and around them. Although the camera’s metering system may not show it, the sunlit portions of the trees are often extremely bright and can easily blow out completely – and the solution is to expose less… which diminishes the light in the shadows. Several solutions are possible. Here I made a single exposure with the brightest areas just at the limit of exposure, and if I had opened up more or lengthened the exposure the fringes of the trees would likely have gone all the way to pure white. (You can allow this to happen with a few specular highlights without much of a problem, but don’t over-do it!) With the single-exposure approach, I find that the shadow fader in ACR is my friend! It does a fine job of bringing back a bit of the detail in the darker areas that might otherwise be lost. Although I didn’t employ them in this photograph, there are some other approaches that can also work. One is to use exposure bracketing – making two or more images at different exposures, usually one for the shadows and one for the highlights, which are then manually combined in post by means of layer masks. This is labor intensive but can produce very wonderful results.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog

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Ross's Geese in Flight, Fog
Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog

Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog. Central Valley, California. December 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Six Ross’s geese fly above the flock on a foggy Central Valley morning

My EXIF data tells me that I must have made this photograph close to noon. In many cases, landscape and nature photographers, this one included, might well be off taking a nap (necessary after a 4:00 a.m. wake up alarm) or looking for lunch, but not on this day. There had been very thick fog when we assembled near the entrance to this Central Valley wildlife shortly after 6:00 a.m., and it showed little sign of clearing as we made our first circumnavigation of the place, looking for the birds that we could hear off somewhere in the gloom but which were quite difficult to actually see, much less photograph! By the time we worked our way around to the far end of the drive around the refuge, the fog began to thin just a bit – though the sun was still obscured – and we found our first big group of Ross’s geese, feeding and squawking wildly.

At first they mostly remained on the ground, walking en masse across the pasture land in which they had landed. Eventually we saw more of them airborne, flying in from or off to some distant place, or sometimes just moving to a different area of the pasture. Before too long, we saw the first explosive group lift-off with its shock of noise and motion as thousands of the birds lift off almost simultaneously and fill the air, sometimes so thickly that you literally cannot see through the flock at times. From then on, there was more or less steady activity of one sort or another and we had lots of opportunity to track flying birds. This group was making a turn over the flock in front of me, preparing to make their landing in the fog.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Deals and Sales

B&H Update (12/14)

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Yes, more deals from site-affiliate B&H. It does seem to be that time of year!

First, a quick comment about buying cameras and other photographic equipment as holiday gifts. There is a lot I could say about this topic, but I’ll just offer a few quick thoughts.

  • If there is a person on your gift list who is interested in getting started on DSLR photography, the current entry-level cameras from companies like Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony are wonderful tools – and it almost always makes more sense to start someone out with one of these cameras and the bundled kit lenses than to get caught up in the notion that new DSLR shooters need to start with high-end gear. (I’ve listed a bunch of Canon “Digital Rebel” options and a few Nikon choices down further on this page, and many are available at discounts right now.)
  • If you are looking for a gift for someone who is already serious about their photography, it is probably best to either ask them what they want, get a gift certificate/card, or possibly offer to take them shopping – perhaps with dinner or lunch included! For such people, choices of equipment are often quite specific and very personal, and it could be quite risky to guess at what they might want or to rely on guesses from other photographers.
  • And if you are thinking of someone who just wants a camera, there is a very good chance that they will be quite happy with a point & shoot camera (available in all levels of sophistication, size, quality… and price).

Now, on to the update of current specials at B&H – in some cases you may need to click the item or add it to your cart to see the lower price:

Information is accurate to the best of my knowledge as of this update, but check the B&H site for accurate and updated details.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Winter Haze and Trees, Central Valley

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Hazy California Central Valley light on groves of trees as tule fog clears, Merced National Wildlife Refuge
Winter Haze and Trees, Central Valley

Winter Haze and Trees, Central Valley. Central Valley, California. December 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hazy California Central Valley light on groves of trees as tule fog clears

In early December, 2012 I had my third opportunity of the season to photograph winter migratory birds. (The first time was last month when I made a quick foray to nearby Central Valley refuges, the second was shortly after that when I found myself with a free day in the Seattle area and drove up to Skagit Valley to photograph trumpeter swans and snow geese.) This was an especially great trip since not only were there birds about (Ross’s geese, a few odd snow geese, white-faced ibises, sandhill cranes, white pelicans, a few egrets and a single great blue heron) but the conditions turned out to be good almost all day and I was joined by a band of great folks: Michael Frye and Claudia Welsh, Dave and Charlotte Hoffman, and my wife Patty Mitchell. And what a day it turned out to be!

Things did not begin so promisingly. As Patty and I drove over from the south San Francisco Bay Area there was a lot of fog and continued to thicken until shortly after leaving Los Banos behind, where we encountered the classic pea soup Central Valley tule fog. Although it was so shallow that we could look up and see pre-dawn Venus and the new moon, ahead it was so thick that the road was barely visible in front of us. It was still thick when we reached the refuge and met the rest of the gang, and on the first part of our drive around the refuge the fog was so thick that we could barely seen any birds, although we could hear them. (One of the most mysterious experiences was hearing sandhill cranes nearby and being able to tell that they were airborne and moving but not see them at all until they would momentarily and briefly partially emerge from the murk and then just as quickly disappear.) Finally, as we came around the far side of the refuge we found a very large group of Ross’s geese close to the dirt road, and from here on things only got better. We had hours of shooting in the fog, which only slowly diminished and didn’t thin out enough to let sun through until probably noon or so. But this was actually a Good Thing, as on a perfectly clear morning the sense of mystery that fog imparts would have been missing… and the shooting probably would have been over in an hour or two. Instead, we continued until it was after 1:30, at which point we finally broke away long enough for lunch before returning for an evening shoot. Again, conditions that started out looking unpromising – the clouds of an incoming weather front were beginning to block the sky to the west – turned out to be perfect and even exceptional as the geese continued their show and the sky lit up brilliantly right at sunset.

I suppose that this photograph proves that I’m still a landscape photographer at heart. While looking around the refuge for birds, my eyes kept moving to the groves of large cottonwood trees and the smaller individual trees, many of which still held a bit of fall color. I’m also a really big fan of misty, hazy atmosphere, and we had that in spades. The fog did lift, but it left behind a beautiful luminous atmosphere and could glow in the right light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.