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

Dawn Light, Fog, Marsh and Tree

February 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Early morning fog above a marsh briefly glows with pink dawn light, San Joaquin Valley

The winter season ends all too quickly here in California, and blossoms are already appearing on trees. Especially in this drought year, now is the time to enjoy the sights of the cool season – so when we had a chance to make another trip out to the San Joaquin Valley to chase migratory birds a few days ago we immediately changed our previous plans and headed out that way. We left shortly after 4:00 AM so that we could meet friends in the valley at 6:15 – well before dawn, but just in time to be ready for the potentially beautiful pre-dawn light, especially if it would turn out to be foggy.

And it did. Although the two-hour drive was mostly through clear conditions, perhaps 10 minutes from our destination we began to run into the typical Central Valley tule fog. It makes driving difficult… but it makes light wonderful! As soon as we drove into the area where we would photograph we could see that the ground-hugging fog was starting to glow in the pink pre-dawn light. Sometimes we hang out for a bit and chat before getting to work on photographing, but these conditions created a sense of urgency and we immediately moved on to look for subjects. Soon one of the members of our party stopped and headed across a bit of pasture towards the edge of a pond where the quiet water reflected the image of a solitary tree and the colorful sky. I soon joined him, and after he moved on I made a series of photographs of this scene. Photographs made a moment later in the sequence have more of a blue coloration, but for a brief moment the fog glowed pink-purple in the early light.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Dunes, Evening

February 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Receding layers of sand dunes in evening light, Death Valley National Park

After a very long day spent driving a lengthy backcountry gravel road through mountainous terrain, I headed back to my camp at Furnace Creek to take care of camp business and grab something to eat. As I usually do in Death Valley, I scheduled my day around a morning subject and an evening subject. Since the morning work had lasted so long, I was thinking of something closer for the evening and, besides, by the time I was ready to shoot it was probably too late to travel very far in the remaining light before the early sunset of this December day. So I decided to travel up the valley a bit to well-known dunes, where I can almost always find something interesting to photograph if I just go looking.

I stopped some distance from the “usual location,” loaded up some basic equipment, and wandered out into a likely looking section of the terrain that would probably not seem all that special to those seeing the area for the first time. (That’s easy to understand, when the impressive and large sand dunes tower above everything else not far from here!) But I know there is a wealth of interesting things to be found even in what appears to be the plainest of the dunes – conjunctions of light and shadow, textures of sand, tracks of small creatures, plants poking through the sand, and more. When I arrived the low sunlight was just about to leave this area, so I worked quickly, trying to take advantage of fleeting moments of shadow and light. As I came to the top of a low dune I saw this complex terrain of dunes and shadows stretching in front of me.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Sun on Rocky Peninsula

February 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun strikes a rocky peninsula in a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake, Kings Canyon National Park

This is another photograph from last September’s nine-day photography sojourn into the high Sierra backcountry of Kings Canyon National Park with three photographer friends. We traveled to a remote 11,000′ basin, where we set up camp and photographed for nearly a week, coming to intimately know the surrounding landscape of lakes, streams, granite, trees, and the changing conditions of atmosphere and light which varied with the weather and the time of day. By spending time in such a place you have the opportunity to look beyond the first impressions of towering granite peaks and immense vistas and to begin to seem more of the smaller details that form the fabric this high country world.

On one of my morning walks in the surrounding terrain I visited a nearby basin full of lakes ranging in size from tiny pools and tarns to quite large lakes filling the basins scooped out by ancient glaciers. This basin is almost surrounded by nearby tall peaks and ridges, though it is open to the north-east as well. Due to these high walls, the sun does not penetrate down to its lowest levels at sunrise, but instead shows up over an extended period as the sun tops nearby ridges and the sun-shadow line traverses the valley. This portion of the lake in the photograph lies against more or less the south side of the valley, where a large and rocky slope ascends toward a ridge that shades the area much later in the morning. At the moment I made this photograph, the sun had reached the thin peninsula of rock in the foreground but the more distant rocks are illuminated by light reflected from other faces nearby.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seals – Mother and Pup

February 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dark elephant seal pup rests its head on its lighter-colored mother.

I first visited this popular elephant seal calving area a few years back when I took a detour on a trip back from Southern California. I was familiar with the elephant seals of northern California, but I had not realized that they were in the south as well, so I was surprised when I came upon this place which has been set up as an observation station where visitors can watch a beach full of these immense creatures close-up. As I understand the outlines of the story, their numbers had decreased to very low levels until they were protected a few decades ago. Since then the population has rebounded. Each year when I visit this location it seems like I see more of them, and they are now starting to show up on other nearby beaches.

These animals are wild and tough creatures. They spend large parts of their lives in the ocean where they are apparently graceful creatures. On land, where they are found here, they can appear to be lazy and awkward and almost humorous at times. At this location in the winter, they mostly seem to lie on the sand – where they are no doubt safe from large off-shore predators – as they raise their pups. From what I read, the females come ashore and then do not eat during the period when they nurse their pups to weights of a few hundred pounds! The herd produces a wild cacophony of sounds that I do not have the vocabulary to fully describe – cries, screams, roars, and the deep and mechanical sound of the large males. Occasional fights erupt, especially a bit later in the season as the males battle for dominance. But if you look around in this mass of seal flesh, you can spot some vignettes that seem somewhere between funny and cute. This small back pup had lifted its head up so that could rest it on the back of the larger and lighter colored elephant seal, which I presume to be its mother.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Dawn Light, Fog, Marsh and Tree

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Dunes, Evening

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Morning Sun on Rocky Peninsula

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Elephant Seals – Mother and Pup

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

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