Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Snow Geese In Flight

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Snow Geese In Flight
A small group of snow geese in flight against an overcast winter sky

Snow Geese In Flight. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small group of snow geese in flight against an overcast winter sky,

Photographing winter birds, especially the larger migratory birds and those that flock together, is a special pleasure during this season. All up and down “my” west” coast birds arrive from very distant locations, many from the arctic, and reveal connections between far flung parts of the planet. I’ve photographed them from Southern California all the way up to Washington’s Skagit Valley.

In one way photographing a set of birds like this is a simple thing: just be there with a camera and be ready to photograph when they appear nearby. But the truth is more complicated. Groups of birds in flight are complicated things. Often they are headed the wrong direction, their positions obstruct one another’s heads, foreground stuff gets in the way, the light of the sky overwhelms the scene, and they move fast! This photograph manages to avoid many of those pitfalls — each bird’s head is visible, their arrangement seems interesting and appealing, and the muted light lets us see details.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Birds in Winter Dusk Sky

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Birds in Winter Dusk Sky
A small flock of birds flies toward the last dusk light on a winter evening.

Birds in Winter Dusk Sky. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small flock of birds flies toward the last dusk light on a winter evening.

It is easy for me to imagine some viewers of this photograph asking questions like, “That’s not real, is it?” or “You photoshopped that, right?” I can’t blame them — or you — for wondering, so I’ll share a few things about the photograph: how it was made, how it came to look the way it does, and why the colors are so atypical for bird photography. But first, of course it is “photoshopped,” that that probably doesn’t mean quite what people intend to imply when they say or write it. Everything in the image appeared just as you see it, and aside from some color balancing and a few other adjustments, the colors were actually just this unusual. (Almost no one ever presents a photograph that hasn’t been optimized in post-production. Virtually all photographers regard the post-production process to be as integral to achieving the final image as all of the things that take place before the shutter is released.)

So, what is going on here? First, and probably most obviously, I used a relatively long shutter speed that allowed the bird’s motion to blur. I often do this at the very end of the day when photographing birds — rather than fighting diminishing light with high ISO and big apertures I go the other way and embrace the blur! The fact that there was so little light is another clue to the colors. I made the photograph significantly after sunset when the last colorful clouds appeared, and I tracked the birds until they crossed a particularly colorful patch of sky. But why are the birds so blue? The answer is that they actually were this blue — though if you had been there your visual system would have “corrected” and told you that you were looking at white birds. While the distant sky was wildly colorful, the close side of the birds was lit by darker sky that was quite blue. (There’s a lot more that could be said about the way we see color non-objectively, but that will have to wait for another post.)

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 and Amazon.

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

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Trees

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Winter Trees
Two bare trees and new winter grasses in a foggy Central Valley pasture.

Winter Trees. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two bare trees and new winter grasses in a foggy Central Valley pasture.

This is a familiar and welcome scene at this time of year in many places in California — bare trees in a winter pasture, cloaked in fog that is just beginning to clear. It surely is not what most world regard as an iconic California photograph — no rugged coastal cliffs, giant redwood trees, granite Sierra peaks, or desert sand dunes. But if you live in this landscape such scenes are at least as representative.

So, despite its non-iconic character, there are a number of things here that I identify with. Let me share a few of them. Note that crop of new green grass beneath the nearer tree. Many who visit California are struck by how brown it is during the tourist season — but they came at the wrong time. Our winter is the green season, as the rains start the plants growing between now and spring. Also, despite all of the classically remarkable California landscapes, these agricultural scenes are probably more typical — grassy areas interrupted by occasional large trees. This photograph is also a reminder for me that there are photographs everywhere, even in what we might think of as mundane landscapes.

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 and Amazon.

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

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Three Trees, Wetlands Sunset

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Three Trees, Wetlands Sunset
Three trees in dusk light on a cloudy winter evening, reflected in the surface of a wetlands pond.

Three Trees, Wetlands Sunset. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three trees in dusk light on a cloudy winter evening, reflected in the surface of a wetlands pond.

California’s Great Central Valley can be a place of surprises. It often seems to be mainly agricultural, presenting a rather flat landscape broken up by farm houses and roads. At times the air is hazy, and it isn’t usually a place of grand vistas. And then it surprises you. On a clear day you may look east toward the Sierra Nevada, snow covered in winter. Far to the north, days of exceptional clarity reveal the massif of Mount Shasta looming over the upper end of the Valley. There are subtler landscapes, too — river banks, oak trees, wetlands, and more.

As this day came to an end a minor weather front laid a line of clouds across the western sky. As the clouds turned red at sunset, the reflection produced a huge arch across the horizon above the hills along the western border of the valley, and the scene was mirrored in a shallow wetlands pond.

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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