Tern in Flight

July 12, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A tern in flight over Monterey Bay in sunset light

I have had this photograph sitting here waiting to be posted for many weeks now, but somehow it got continually supplanted by other images. Time to get it posted! For one thing, it may be my only photograph of a at this point, and I want to have it in my online archive.

The photograph comes from a memorably evening nearly a year ago when we went to the Moss Landing area of Monterey Bay after hearing that friends had seen whales very close to the shoreline here. Although I have lived in this area for decades and I regularly pass by this area, I had never actually been out to the beach here. The first thing that surprised us when we arrived was the truly astonishing number of sea birds — I had never seen so many in one place before. I surmise that they must have been drawn here by the same fish or other food that drew the whales. With so many birds around I used the conditions to focus on various birds that were extremely close. Here the bird was a tern — not an easy bird to photograph in flight, and they don’t exactly fly in slow, straight lines. I also photographed a big group of pelicans that was settled in very close to the shoreline. And eventually the whales did show up, rising up out of the water a short distance from the beach.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Chicago

Less Than All There

July 11, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A downtown Chicago Building

Recently I have been revisiting some urban photography from nearly a year ago, when we spent time in Chicago and then in New York City. Expect a few more of these photographs over the next few days, a number of which may focus on small details of the urban landscape.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Dead Trees, Sandstone Pothole

July 10, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dead trees lie at the bottom of a deep sandstone pothole, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

There are multiple ways to react to the remarkable sandstone potholes from this terrain of rounded sandstone hills and gentle slabs. First of all, they are remarkable structures. They are simply “holes” in the sandstone — but surprisingly large holes. They are many feet across and perhaps 15-20 feet deep. They have no outlet, and you can imagine that with the right water source they would make rather gigantic swimming holes. Their source is not immediately apparent, though I understand that they are created over a long period of time by the forces of wind and water on the relatively soft sandstone.

They are beautiful, too. Their smooth, curving shapes have an almost sensuous quality, made stronger by the warm colors of the sandstone rock. Surprisingly, plants and even trees grow at the bottom of many of them. But these potholes may also be traps — there is no way out of their depths except for those creatures that can fly. In the middle or relatively smooth expanses of sandstone, these pits appear suddenly, and the angles at their edges quickly increase to vertical, making them potentially dangerous. The pothole in this photograph seems to me to have a bit less of the rock garden quality and a bit more of the ominous quality, with two dead cottonwood trees and broken branches littering the bottom of the pit.

Photographs: Nature

Dahlia

July 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dahlia blossom.

I’m not usually the flower photographer around here — that title goes to my wife, Patty, whose passion is seeing and photographing the very small world of flowers. But every so often I give it a try. We spent some time one morning at the beautiful botanical gardens in Fort Bragg, where I made a few photographs including this one of a dark-colored dahlia blossom

We were in Northern California for a few days earlier this week, centered in the Mendocino area but traveling from there to places as far away as Humboldt Redwood State Park and even up to Ferndale, California. Overall it was not a tremendously successful trip for photography, at least not for me. (It was, however, a very successful trip for eating…) Photography in this area is perhaps more condition-dependent than in some other places where I photograph, and the conditions were difficult this time. No matter. Even when I don’t come back with a lot of photographs, I do come back with more knowledge of the place that I can can use the next time I’m there.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tern in Flight

Less Than All There

Dead Trees, Sandstone Pothole

Dahlia

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