Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

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

Evening Sky, San Joaquin Valley

January 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

In late December, as winter began, we spent a day photographing in our favorite area of the San Joaquin Valley, where we shoot migratory birds and the austere and often atmospheric landscape of the Central Valley. The primary excise for going there at this time of year is virtually always the birds: geese, ibises, sandhill cranes, herons, egrets, white pelicans, and many more. For most of the day this was our primary subject, starting in the thick early morning fog and continuing as it began to lift, and then later when we returned after lunch to find a bit more light getting through.

Very late in the day the bird action diminished — many of the geese were in nearby areas that are inaccessible to us, and other birds were either quieter or hidden in more distant locations. It seemed like the bird photography was winding down for the day. (Though there was a special surprise a bit later on.) At about this time, what had been a thick deck of fog and clouds began to break up to the west, and just before sunset the clouds thinned enough to let in some direct soft light which glowed luminously on the clouds and in the hazy atmosphere. Oh, about that surprise… A bit later it really seemed like the birds were unusually quiet and we pretty much stopped photographing them as the light began to fade. (Often we continue shooting until it is simply too dark to focus and make exposures.) The members of our group, who had been spread over several miles of this particular refuge, collected together near the exit to say goodbye… as cranes arrived, followed moments later by a deep dusk fly-in by thousands of geese who landed in near darkness on the pond next to where we were standing and watching.

Soft evening clouds above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

December 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

I’ll say good bye to 2014 with a few sunset photographs this week. Recently I had reasons to go back through over a decades worth of photographs, including many that I have not shared. While this is certainly work, it is also occasionally a source of wonderful surprises — as seeing the older photographs triggers memories of photographic adventures that I haven’t thought about for a while and as I “discover” photographs that have sat in the raw file archives for many years. They get left there for a range of reasons. Sometimes I just didn’t yet “see” them the right way at the time I made them, or in other cases I got busy before I finished working my way thoroughly through a set of images and I moved on too soon. (This may be yet another reason to be conservative when it comes to deleting “unneeded” files!)

This photograph came from the very end of several days of photographing fall color in the eastern Sierra. It was a special few days, as there was light snow and wonderful color for most of the time I was there, and these conditions had me shooting around the clock, from before sunrise until it was too dark to make more photographs. On this final day I did some shooting in the eastern Sierra near Lee Vining in the late afternoon and finally decided that I was finished and that it was time to start back home through Yosemite. In the early evening light I headed up Lee Vining Canyon toward Tioga Pass, and as I drove by Ellery Lake I found these lovely conditions: new snow on the ground, golden hour light on the peaks and reflected in the surface of the lake, a nearly full moon rising above the shoulder of the high peaks, into blue sky slightly streaked with thing lines of clouds, and the complex symmetries of curving ridges. I couldn’t have asked for a better benediction to mark the final photographs of this trip.

The autumn mood rises over recent snow on ridges above Ellery Lake near the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Merced River, Branches, El Capitan

December 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Branches in the still water of the Merced River with floating autumn leaves and the reflection of El Capitan, Yosemite Valley.

This photograph is almost a bit of an optical trick. I’ll let you look for a second and figure it out…

… Does it make sense now? The foreground is composed of some intertwining dead branches just above the surface of a very still section of the quiet, late autumn Merced River in Yosemite Valley. The leaves floating on and just beneath the surface of the water give it away. Because there are so many branches, their dark reflections seem, to me at least, to almost merge with the shapes of the actual branches, creating a complex pattern. And, reflected in the surface of the water and appearing as a backdrop to these elements, is the sunlit face of El Capitan.

I would love to tell a great story about making this photograph… but I don’t remember making it! I discovered it only recently while reviewing all of my old raw files, and all I can say for sure is that I made it on one of my annual late October trips to The Valley to photograph the fall colors. For those who follow the technical stuff, I made this photograph with some pretty low-level gear back at a time when I was experimenting with my first DSLR. The camera was the very humble (but better than some think, at least for this sort of thing!) Canon Digital Rebel XT, an early 8 MP body. Even more humble was the lens, the not so swell EFS 17-85mm Canon lens.

(Note: This was originally posted on September 21, 2011. I’m moving this photograph back up on the home page today as this is a new revision of the original photograph — the date of the revision is December 26, 2014)

Photographs: Northern California

Mount Hamilton Road, Santa Clara Valley

December 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The expansive panorama from the summit of Mount Hamilton, including Mt Hamilton Road, Santa Clara Valley, and the distant San Francisco Bay

I have a long and deep relationship with the terrain shown in this photograph — a photo that may not mean much to people who don’t share this experience, or at least know similar California coastal and inland terrain. I made the photograph late on a winter afternoon at the summit of Mount Hamilton as a Pacific weather front was just nosing in over the San Francisco Bay Area. Mount Hamilton is the tallest peak in the Bay Area at just over 4000′, and it is also the site of the historic James Lick Observatory. The view from the summit takes in a huge swatch of California — on clear days you can see a good chunk of San Francisco Bay to the northwest, Monterey Bay to the south, and the line of Sierra Nevada summits far to the east.

I’ve visited this peak since I was a youngster and my father took us there to visit rare Bay Area snow. (The road closes these days when there is snow, but that was not the case in the past.) We also traveled there to tour the observatory and visit the telescopes, which was a powerful experience for young kids. Later as an avid and serious cyclist Mount Hamilton was a regular destination for training and other rides. I climbed the road twisting among the hills in the photograph many times, and I could descend it at speeds that would likely scare most people. Eventually I and my cyclist friends came to know the road like the backs of our hands, and as we entered one turn we would already be mentally setting up for the next couple of turns after that, trying to maintain as much speed on the descent as possible. Today when I drive the road I’m still running over the deep memory of the turns, how they bank, what lies ahead, the width of the road, as I descend… at a much more sedate and prudent speed!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Evening Sky, San Joaquin Valley

Ellery Lake Moonrise, Autumn

Merced River, Branches, El Capitan

Mount Hamilton Road, Santa Clara Valley

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