Category Archives: Photographs: Central California

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Surf, Fog, and Peninsula

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Surf, Fog, and Peninsula
A peninsula disappears into coastal fog beyond a surf-filled bay along California’s rugged Big Sur coast.

Surf, Fog, and Peninsula. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A peninsula disappears into coastal fog beyond a surf-filled bay along California’s rugged Big Sur coast.

Aside from a few camping trips in relatively remote places, we hardly travelled at all between March of 2020 and the beginning of May 2021. I managed to spend a little time in the Eastern Sierra last fall, I had a great visit to Death Valley back in early April, I’ve gotten to the coast a few times, and I did manage one-day trips to photograph birds — but that’s it. So our recent multi-day (and multi-purpose, though that’s a different story…) trip down the California coast and back to visit Southern California was quite special. We planned to go south on route 1, but we then decided to add a night on the return trip so that we could go back home the same way. This photograph comes from a stop along that coastline on a very foggy day.

The region we call the “Big Sur Coast” (from my perspective, encompassing the section from about Point Lobos south to the lower bluffs below Ragged Point) has had a string of tough years. Flooding has repeatedly closed the route, wildfires scorched huge areas, and businesses have suffered. There are numerous causes for the situation, ranging from climate change to increasing tourism, but the place has been changed. On the other hand, the route is open now, and the spell of this rugged section of Pacific coast is as strong as ever.

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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Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Wetland Menagerie

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Wetland Menagerie
A small collection of shallow water feeders in Central Valley wetlands.

Wetland Menagerie. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small collection of shallow water feeders in Central Valley wetlands.

Today’s photograph is something that is a bit more of a record perhaps — a photograph of three sorts of wetland birds that are not among those that typically loom largest in our attention. The long-beaked birds at the left are white-fronted ibises. I think that the brown birds are teals — perhaps cinnamon teals? The taller black and white birds are black-necked stilts.

All of these are shallow-water feeders. The ibises and stilts give this away with their long legs and beaks, while the ducks dispense with the dignity that comes from standing erect and simply get up close and personal with the water and the muck beneath it. I’ve written before about how I came to photograph such critters not from an initial attraction to birds, but more to discovering them in the landscape. This leads to several aspects of my relationship to birds: I’m not an expert on them, and I’m still learning new things about them all the time. (This week’s new nugget is that there are “diving ducks” and “dabbling ducks.” Who knew?)

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

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

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Winter Geese, Wetlands

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Winter Geese, Wetlands
Winter geese and the winter landscape of California’s Central Valley.

Winter Geese, Wetlands. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Winter geese and the winter landscape of California’s Central Valley.

Perhaps this is a wildlife photograph. Perhaps it is a landscape. Perhaps both? Maybe a ‘birdscape?” When I photograph subjects like this I don’t focus on one photographic type, but instead I tend to move across these boundaries — at one extreme perhaps making photographs of individual birds and at the other occasionally photographing subjects in these locations that don’t include wildlife at all. (From a technical perspective, this influences the equipment I use, which might not always look like the typical wildlife photography gear. But I digress…)

My home territory for these photographs during the migratory bird season between roughly November and about now is California’s Great Central Valley, a landscape extending from the Interstate 5’s ascent at the south end to the mountains culminating in Mount Shasta in the north. Much of this country is agricultural, flat, and the sort of area you might tend to pass through rather than consider as a destination. Yet you don’t really know California if you don’t spend time out here.

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.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Old Tree in Winter

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Old Tree in Winter
An old and gnarled tree, leafless near the end of winter.

Old Tree in Winter. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An old and gnarled tree, leafless near the end of winter.

Having a large archive of photographs that are sorted and filed by date proves useful in lots of ways. For example, this past week I wanted to remind myself of the likely conditions of a particular subject I intend to photograph soon, and by looking back a few years I was able to get a pretty good fix on the timing of a pretty significant annual change affecting this subject. It also proves useful for non-photographic purposes… such as remembering how our world was starting to close down in March of 2020 and how we responded to it.

This photograph comes from near the beginning of March last year, at a time when we were well aware that danger was on the horizon, but when we had not yet fully responded as a society. (That was about to happen, and I should be able to share some photographs that remind me of that threshold in the next few weeks.) On this day I recall pausing beneath this sprawling wetland tree and appreciating the layers of curves and various sized branches leading upward toward an extremely bright late-winter sky.

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.