Category Archives: Photographs: Wildlife

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron

February 7, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great blue heron in flight above the San Joaquin Valley

The great blue heron is a big and spectacular bird that I sometimes find in the San Joaquin Valley in the winter. It is often along — though occasionally paired up with an egret — and I find them in fields, grassy areas, and occasionally near ditches and creeks. The heron is an impressively big bird, slightly larger than the great white egrets that are often found in similar locations.

In some ways they are not so hard to photograph, though getting close enough to fill the frame with one of them isn’t easy. Often when photographing in an area where I can usually find them, they will seem to be not overly distracted as I come up to a reasonable distance, trying to avoid upsetting the bird. Then, almost invariably, I sense that the bird is nervous about my presence, so I go no closer — and before long it typically takes to the air. (Most often I photograph them from inside a vehicle.) Their flight is beautiful, as they spread their large wings and once in the air glide gracefully. The other sort of opportunity to photograph them is when one simply happens to fly past, which is what this one did. As it crossed in front of me I managed to squeeze of more than a half-dozen photographs of the bird against the foggy Central Valley sky.

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Ducks, Pond, Fog

February 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ducks settled in on a San Joaquin Valley pond on a foggy morning

Yet another foggy winter morning in the wetlands of California’s San Joaquin Valley. I had started photographing not too long before I made this photograph, though the beginning of the day was both foggy and nearly dark, with barely enough light to photograph. Working in the near darkness and thick fog, right through a sunrise that I could not see, is a mysterious experience. I could hear birds, but I could only barely make out a few of the closest animals though the murky atmosphere.

I moved on and eventually came to this flooded field — to my mind it is a pond, since I’m only in this place to see it in the wet winter season. Aside from an occasional noisy liftoff by one duck or a small group, the scene was very quiet and still. Occasionally a few geese or cranes flew over as the ducks fed silently, moving slowly across the water, and birds that were a bit farther away from me quickly faded into the fog, through which the faint shapes of trees on the other side of the pond were barely visible.

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

Geese, Twilight

February 4, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Abstract photograph of low-flying flock of geese in twilight

It has been a while since I share a fuzzy goosescape, so I’ll try to make up for it with this one. Late in the evening of a long day photographing migratory birds and the San Joaquin Valley landscape, after the sun had set, I made this last photograph of the day in very low light. As we photograph on into the evening — typically with the camera off the tripod when photographing birds — we try to keep up with the fading light by opening up the aperture, raising the ISO, and gradually lengthening the shutter speed.

Eventually there comes a point where the light is so low that this won’t allow sharp photographs of moving birds any more. I actually look forward to this end-of-the-evening time and I happily switch over to intentional motion blur photographs. I lower the ISO, close down the aperture, lengthen the shutter speed and try for soft, blurring photographs. A lot of this work is rather experimental, since you can’t completely know what you’ll get ahead of time. You do have some control — shutter speed controls just how much blur there will be; by panning the camera you can get moving subjects to be defined enough to recognize; by moving the camera you can control the angles and curves of lines of blurred light. And when it all works out just right the result can be quite beautiful and, in some ways, more suggestive of the feeling of this place at twilight.

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

Geese, Sun, Winter Clouds

February 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of Ross’s geese flies in front of winter sun in cloud-filled sky

Occasionally, magic happens when out in a place like this, and it makes many days of less-magical photography seem more than worth it. And there was such magic at the end of this long day of winter photography in the San Joaquin Valley, beginning with a predawn arrival and hours of photography in mysterious tule fog, sometimes with birds heard by not seen. Friends were there with us, and as the day wore on more arrived. Sometimes we worked together and sometimes we headed off in different directions, but as the end of the day approached we began to see where the birds would be at sunset and then to pick our strategies for the final light.

Several of us ended up near a very large flock of Ross’s geese that was settling down in a pasture along a gravel road. The birds were gradually moving east, so we placed ourselves even further east so that rows of trees and the western sky would be in back of the birds. We settled in to photograph, occasionally moving a bit to accommodate the flock as it continued its drift to the east. For the most part things were quiet — geese came and went, with groups of them approaching from the west and landing near us. The sun was right behind the birds, which would normally make photography very challenging, but a cooperative cloud bank drifted across and blocked enough of the light to allow us to shoot straight into it as lines of birds came towards us to land.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron

Ducks, Pond, Fog

Geese, Twilight

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