Category Archives: Photographs: Flight

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

Snow Geese and Sky

March 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Six snow geese against blue sky and thin clouds

When out photographing winter birds in the Central Valley of California there are so many things to photograph and so many ways to photograph them. It might be perfectly blue-sky clear, it might be foggy, or there could be the precursor or remnant clouds of a Pacific weather front. There might be agricultural subjects nearby—cattle, barns and other structures, fields. Or I could end up in a town, with its farmland character. And there are always the birds—close up photographs of individuals, groups clustering together, huge flocks. They might be in trees, on the water, flying, feeding in fields.

While it is perhaps not the sort of shot that I most like, I can’t help myself from photographing groups of birds that fly over. I’m not sure if it the continuing desire to get the perfect arrangement of birds in motion, the technical challenge of making a photograph of such rapidly moving targets, or some primal hunting instinct… but I do know that when I’m not photographing something else compelling, I’ll fire off a lot of photographs of birds in flight. And we had plenty of them on this mid-February day, when the birds seemed both more willing to let us be close and more likely to take flight. This group separated from a much larger flock that was wheeling overhead and passed almost above me before turning west into the sun.

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: Wildlife

Geese in Flight, Dusk

January 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A flock of geese takes to the air at dusk, San Joaquin Valley

After nearly a week in the dry and desiccated (and cold!) terrain of Death Valley National Park, I decided to break up my homeward drive with an evening stop in California’s San Joaquin Valley to photograph migratory birds. It is hard to imagine two places that are more different. Death Valley is mostly hard edged, dry, with only the hardiest vegetation, and a place of scarce wildlife. The San Joaquin is largely farmland, albeit due to irrigation, and where I went there is a lot of water and many thousands of birds. It was quite a contrast with where I had been and a sort of “welcome home” to a world that I am more accustomed to.

I arrived perhaps an hour before sunset, after a long drive that had begun early in the morning on the far side of the Sierra – and with a couple of hours of driving still to do. I drove across narrow farmland roads to get to the refuge, where I stopped and sat for a few moments before switching into “wildlife photographer mode.” As I had approached the place I had spotted a very large flock of Ross’s geese along the roadway that runs along the refuge, so I made steady progress back to this spot, where I figured I would do my evening photography. There was a very large group of geese already when I got there, and more were arriving from other far off locations. The geese mostly settle in on the pasture land and eat, but every so often something disturbs them and they take off en masse in a wild maelstrom of flapping wings and noise, fly around a few times, and soon return to almost the spot they left. There were two or three such giant “explosions” of flying geese as I photographed, and I shot this group using a rather slow shutter speed in post sunset dusk light.

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

Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

January 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Flocks of sandhill cranes fly through dawn haze above San Joaquin Valley marshland

This is another New Year’s Day photograph – and probably won’t be the last one. The typical process when I shoot here is to start at a parking area near the entrance before the sun comes up, either meeting friends there or else simply pausing to get my gear ready and put on warm clothes. Without fail, I also pause for a few minutes to take in the extraordinary sound of the many thousands of migratory birds, usually coming from unseen places off in the mist or fog, and the sound always makes me smile. I may make a few initial photographs in the dim predawn light, and then I usually move off to start looking for subjects.

On this morning I began my “move” before the sun came up, but moments later I looked over my shoulder to see the first light of the rising sun, and I quickly found this location with a small gap in the tules, a bare tree, and some reflecting water, and I lined them up with the rising sun. In this foggy valley, when the fog is not too thick, there is a brief interval of perhaps a minute or two when the globe of the sun rises behind the fog, which mutes the light and allows me to shoot straight into the sun. Also right about dawn, flights of sandhill cranes lift off and fly in lines above the landscape – and on this morning the two ephemeral events happened simultaneously.

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

Geese, San Joaquin Valley Sunset

December 25, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese fly toward the setting sun, San Joaquin Valley, California

Photographing these migratory birds involves an interesting combination of planning, intuitive response to the circumstances, and just plain raw luck. (In truth, that is the case with almost all photographs of almost all subjects, but that is probably a subject for a different post at another time.) All of those things were certainly at work in this photograph.

I often photograph in this general area at this time of year – ostensibly because of the migratory geese and cranes and other birds, but also because I love the diverse conditions of light and atmosphere here in the winter (and near-winter) months and the simple landscape. So the choice to be at this location at this time of day was no accident. (A bit more information: I was returning from Death Valley and I had organized this final day specifically so that I would have one hour at this location at sunset on the return trip.) In addition, when I found a large flock of geese in a field – in a place where I know there is a good chance I’ll find them – I positioned myself intentionally to the east of the flock so that the colorful light would be behind them as the day ended… or to their side. In addition, since I’ve photographed this subject before I have a pretty good idea of how to set up my camera to deal with the failing light combined with direct sun and birds in motion, even anticipating how I may have to work the images in post-production. But luck and intuition play an undeniable role in photographing this subject. While I can make some guesses about how the birds will act, I have no control over them at all – and I have to take what they give me. On this evening, they were mostly taking flight away from me and toward the mountains, though certainly not always with the sun behind them. Occasionally large groups would take to the air together, and I would simply track them and fire when it seemed best. Here is where another bit of intuition comes in. While I cannot control how the birds appear in relationship to their surroundings, I can manage to watch birds and landscape as both move in the viewfinder and think about composition even while everything is in fast motion – and, when it all works out, think about how momentary arrangements of the birds do or do not “work” with the light and the landscape. To end with an acknowledgement of how much I cannot control, it was simply fortuitous that this thick flock happened to wheel in front of the distant mountains just as the last edge of the sun was about to slip below the horizon.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Flight

Snow Geese and Sky

Geese in Flight, Dusk

Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

Geese, San Joaquin Valley Sunset

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.