Category Archives: Photographs: Wildlife

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Flock of Cranes in Flight

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Flock of Cranes in Flight
A flock of sandhill cranes in flight against clear blue sky.

Flock of Cranes in Flight. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of sandhill cranes in flight against clear blue sky.

Today’s post gives me an excuse to explore a few technical (and aesthetic) considerations about photographing birds, so I’m sharing this photograph both as an image and as an illustration of a few things I’ll mention below. I made the photograph in the morning (contrary to a possibly erroneous bit of EXIF data in the file), when the rising sun was still low and the light was muted a bit by thin fog. I positioned myself in a spot that groups of cranes were crossing, and I simply waited for them to approach.

There’s a lot going on inside a dynamic flock like this one. Some things are at least partially subject to decisions by the photographer, while others must simply be accepted as “what is.” Even those that are subject to photographer decisions improve the odds rather than producing certainty. I identified a spot over which groups of birds were flying. I chose to position myself on the “sunny side” of that point so that passing birds would get some direct illumination. This is important, since backlit birds against a back sky are… challenging. The second issue has to do with the positions of the birds in the frame and relative to one another. With practice one can become better at framing the flying birds in desirable ways. More difficult is keeping track of how the birds interact with one another in flight. Ideally you probably want them close together, but you don’t want one bird obscuring the head of a nearby bird. The birds rarely understand this! But you can increase the odds by developing your ability to watch this positional interplay among the birds. You learnt to avoid triggering the shutter when the positions aren’t great and (to some extent) time your shots for when they are. In the end, as in this photograph, while all of these intentional acts help, there are still significant elements of chance in the result… and here it worked and not a single bird’s head is blocked by another in the group.

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

The Cranes Return, Dusk

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The Cranes Return, Dusk
As the day ends, sandhill cranes return to the wetlands.

The Cranes Return, Dusk. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

As the day ends, sandhill cranes return to the wetlands.

Sandhill cranes are often the first birds I am aware of in the early morning and the last I look for in the evening before I put my camera away. In fact, the boundary between enough and too little light often comes during their evening return, so it isn’t unusual to end the day just watching them.

I’ve never quite figured out where they go during the day, though I suppose that some investigation would turn up the answer. (In a West Coast location I once found thousands of them in a dry, barren, out-of-the way place where I was virtually alone with them.) I’ll never forget the first time I experienced their evening return. At the end of a day of photography it was becoming dark — too dark, I thought, to continue. As I was about to pack up my gear I heard a remarkable sound coming from the southeast, a sound that I didn’t understand then but which I now recognize immediately as that of the returning flocks. A few moments later hundreds (more likely thousands) of them arrived, filling the sky, and then descending to nearby ponds.

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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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: Fall, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Cranes, Pond, Autumn Morning

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Cranes, Pond, Autumn Morning
A small flock of sandhill cranes stands in a wetland pond in early morning autumn light.

Cranes, Pond, Autumn Morning. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small flock of sandhill cranes stands in a wetland pond in early morning autumn light.

I am a big fan of these flat landscapes of trees and grasses and ponds and birds, especially between the last month or so of autumn and the end of winter. All up and down California (and in many other places, too) migratory and native birds are everywhere, and while it might seem that there isn’t much happening here from the human perspective, the action is almost continuous in the lives of birds. The first thing I do when I arrive in such places before dawn is open the car window or door and listen — the sound may be that of a few far-off birds or it might be the raucous chorus of thousands of them nearby and overhead, but the striking sound of the cranes is almost always somewhere in the mix.

I began photographing before dawn on this morning as I usually do. I slowly worked my way along a levee, pausing to watch for and then photograph birds in the low light. The first big group I spotted was a large flock of snow geese, but they were not in a great spot for photography, so I kept moving. Soon I came upon a huge flock of hundreds of cranes in and around a pond. At first they were mostly standing still in the shallow water, but gradually they began to become restless and then, group by group, take to the air and fly away. I don’t recall now for sure, but judging by their attentive postures, there’s a good chance that this group left shortly after I made the photograph.

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: Fall, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Autumn Sky

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Geese, Autumn Sky
Geese return to Central Valley wetlands under dramatic autumn sky.

Geese, Autumn Sky. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Geese return to Central Valley wetlands under dramatic autumn sky.

This has been a strange autumn in California in a host of ways. The state has been contending with the effects of warmer and drier conditions and declining precipitation for at least a decade now, and late-autumn is now part of the wildfire season, a time that used to terminate with the first late-October rains. In my part of California, where the rains usually get going in November and December is one of the three core rainy months., we have had almost no precipitation at all. You’ll pardon us if we spend a lot of time watching the sky and hoping for real weather to arrive.

A week ago I spent some time in the Great Central Valley making photographs. I had been putting off my visits because I prefer “interesting weather,” and there really wasn’t any. I finally went there because there was the tiniest chance of a little bit of fog and because, well, it looked like that would be the best we’d see for a while. The morning was nice — the true fog did not materials, but there was a beautiful softness in the atmosphere anyway. But late in the day it just became… gray… as a cloud shield from a weather front came in from the west. I almost left, and I had actually mostly packed up, when I decided that I might as well stick around a bit longer since I was there. It turned out to be the right decision. One development was something familiar to me from past evenings — as the light moved to the west the hazy atmosphere became more transparent and, like a stage scene illuminated behind a scrim, the shapes of the western clouds became clearer as geese arrived to settle into a nearby 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, 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.