Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Couple on Bench

May 9, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A couple sitting on a bench outside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

A couple of years ago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) closed for work on a major expansion and remodeling project. We have been members for some time, and I recall squeezing in one last visit before the long closure — viewing favorite works and making photographs inside the place. The big news is that the remodel is virtually finished now, and the museum officially reopens very soon, on May 14. But an opening like this doesn’t take place all at once. There is a sort of run-up to the actual event that brings people into the new facility over a period of time. As members, it was our turn (along with thousands of others) to get a preview this week.

I may have more to say about the museum in the future, but for now I’ll just say that I like it a lot — both the work exhibited (not that we saw all of it in one day!) and the building itself. There are a number of wonderful touches — many visual connections to the surrounding city (where the previous facility felt more walled off from San Francisco), lots of light, a brilliant system of stairways and spaces along the eastern side, and more. Oddly, almost none of that is in this first photograph I made at the new SFMOMA, which depicts an almost deserted new entrance and seems to show more of the surrounding city environment than the museum itself. More to come eventually…

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

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

Great Blue Heron

May 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great blue heron stands next to a Sacramento Valley pond

As I prepare photographs to share via social media (in my continuing photo-a-day marathon, now perhaps the years old) I often have photographs lined up for posting days or weeks in the future. Occasionally one sits here on the computer for a long time before I finally share it. This photograph of a great blue heron is such a photograph — I made it almost four months ago, way back when we were in the middle of winter!

This past winter I decided to expand the range of my bird photography a bit. I’ve been photographing winter birds in Central California for the past few years, but mostly in a range from roughly Sacramento south. So it was time to connect a few dots on the map and travel out of that area a bit. One of the first extended visits took me a good distance up the Sacramento Valley on a cold winter day when snow topped the mountains to both the east and west. This specimen was hanging out along an irrigation ditch near the edge of a wildlife refuge, and it allowed me to get relatively close (“hidden” inside a vehicle) without taking flight.

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

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

White-Fronted Geese in Flight

March 25, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small group of white-fronted geese in flight about the Sacramento Valley

I photographed this group of white-fronted geese on one of my excursion to new California bird photography locations this past winter. It wasn’t that many years ago that I first “discovered” the huge population of migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, on a weekend after a colleague made an off-hand comment about birds as we waited in line at a coffee stand that sent me off to investigate. I went to a place where there were sandhill cranes and, eventually, a sky magnificently full of birds, most of which I could not identify. I was hooked. Soon I went to a location near that spot, and eventually became quite a frequent visitor to several places including one that isn’t too far from where I live.

Last year I started thinking that I should expand my horizons a bit and start to seek out other locations along the Pacific Flyway. I pushed a bit further up the Central Valley and eventually managed to spend time up along the California-Oregon border. I photographed this photogenic group at one of those upper Central Valley areas. Visiting such a place for the first time can be a bit tricky. It takes a while to get to know the rhythms of a place — where and when which birds show up, where the interesting backgrounds are, how far to drive to get a cup of coffee… At this new refuge I had almost no idea what I was doing. I hoped to find one kind of geese, but they were scarce — yet I found other things that I saw less often in my usual haunts: bald eagles, lots of night herons, an occasion tundra swan, and many white-fronted geese. Eventually I found a spot by a pond where huge flocks of geese were coming and going, a mixture of mostly snow geese and white-fronted geese, and I began to feel that I might be able to figure the place out.

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

Colorful Granite Cliff and Trees

March 16, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A colorful High Sierra granite cliff and trees in soft light

Sitting here on a late-winter day, this late September week spent photographing in the Yosemite back-country seems so far away. (At the same time, as I watch the inevitable progress of the seasons, the upcoming summer season seems closer and closer!) Three photographers headed out to a back-country lake, where we set up a base-camp for something like nine days of photography. It might seem like photographing in one tiny area for a week might exhaust its possibilities. In fact, at the start of such a trip I often harbor such fears — but by the end of every one of them I am again reminded that it virtually never works that way. The more time spent looking in such a place, there more there is to see, and at the end of such a trip there are, inevitably, things left to be photographed on the next visit.

Not far from our camp was a rocky area that we often crossed in order to make our way around the perimeter of a nearby lake and to get to areas a bit further away. After climbing slabs the route dropped into the lower extent of a deep gully traveling down from higher terrain, and eventually I began to know these rocks and this gully very well. We had “interesting” weather during our stay, and on the day I made this photograph the light was muted by various factors including clouds and wildfire smoke.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Couple on Bench

Great Blue Heron

White-Fronted Geese in Flight

Colorful Granite Cliff and Trees

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