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

Red on White, Sandstone

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Red on White, Sandstone - A vestigial layer of red sandstone forms small, layered mounds atop patterned white rock, Zion National Park
A vestigial layer of red sandstone forms small, layered mounds atop patterned white rock, Zion National Park

Red on White, Sandstone. Zion National Park, Utah. October 22, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A vestigial layer of red sandstone forms small, layered mounds atop patterned white rock, Zion National Park

All over the southwest, where various layers of sedimentary rock meet, it is possible to find odd and surprising juxtapositions of the different layers. In many places a bit of a higher, harder layer will remain above the softer material below, creating hoodoos and mushroom-shaped structures. Sometime the upper rim of a canyon will be lined with a layer of the harder rock, while there is a steep drop-off below. Here, bits of the darker read sandstone, with different types of layering and different texture, sit on top of the smoothly curving and finely layered underlying lighter rock.

I had seen this spot in Zion in the past – it isn’t all that hard to find – and even photographed it from a greater distance and different angles. This time I decided to approach more closely, walking out on the wave-like formation of the lower, lighter rock and passing around these small reddish prominences. I made this photograph on the same day I made many of my other most recent Zion photographs, a day when the light varied tremendously due to winds and cloud cover. One moment this spot was hit by brilliant sunshine, and a moment later it was in shade – and the changes did not always synchronize between the near and far elements. I made this photograph during a moment when the direct sun was largely muted by passing clouds.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

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Selecting This Year’s “Favorite Photographs” – the Second Cut

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I’ve eliminated another 50 photographs from the running for inclusion in my “2012 Favorites” collection that I’m compiling for release sometime in the next week or so. It already hurts to pull some of them, but I still have way too many! Here is the current list of contenders:

2012 Favorites - the Second Cut
2012 Favorites – the Second Cut

I’d be happy to hear from anyone who has thoughts on this or who wants to suggest a favorite.

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The Task of Selecting the Year’s “Favorite Photographs” Images

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It has now become an annual ritual (obligation? ;-) to share a list of annual “best” or “favorite” photographs at about this time each year. I prefer to refer to them as my “favorites,” since it is very difficult to truly know which are “best.” Sometimes understanding that takes quite a while – photos that seemed amazing at first lose their magic and others that seemed less special grow on you.

So, how to do this? I exposed perhaps nearly 10,000 raw files last year. Most of those will never see the light of day. Of these, I was willing to share them at a rate of about one per day, though some will still be coming up here as “daily photos” for the first time in 2013. So I’m guessing that I might have 400 images to start out with. My target is a dozen photographs, but I’ve never distilled in quite to that point, and about 20 seems more likely.

My first step is to take all of the photos that I have shared online (or plan to share soon) that were made in 2012 and put them into a collection in Lightroom. I make a quick scan through these and start by generously giving anything that catches my eye a starting 3-star rating. That’s what I’ve done so far… and I have 119 photos!

2012 Favorites - The First Cut
2012 Favorites – The First Cut

The next step in the distillation process will be to go through those 119 photos and look for overlaps, images that I have a soft spot for but which don’t really work as well photographically, and photos to represent a certain diversity among the work I’ve done. I’ll share the results of that process here, too, once I complete it.

From that next selection, I’ll have the hard task of making the final cut.

If you have opinions about any of the photographs you’ve seen here this year, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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

Ross’s Geese, Tree and Marsh

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Ross's Geese, Tree and Marsh
Ross’s Geese, Tree and Marsh

Ross’s Geese, Tree and Marsh. Central Valley, California. December 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A thick flock of Ross’s geese flies above a marsh and a solitary tree in California’s Central Valley

After a full morning (and then some!) of photographing mostly Ross’s geese at a Central Valley wildlife refuge, we took a short break for a mid-afternoon lunch and then hurried back to the refuge by about 3:30 for evening photography. One of the last things we did before taking this break was to briefly assemble at the main overlook near the entrance to the refuge, where we were a bit surprised to see lots of geese settling in on one of the nearby ponds, and from which we could look back and see still more geese at the edges of the pasture where we had been photographing them.

As is often the case on a tule fog day like this one in the Central Valley, while the fog did “clear,” the general haziness never did completely go away. Instead the atmosphere remained mildly opaque, and it glowed in the late afternoon sunlight. Looking west, it was almost hard to see into this glow, but that is the direction we looked to see the pond and beyond it some isolated trees and the wetlands disappearing into the distance. Behind us, back on that pasture, the flock suddenly lifted off all at once and the birds made a large loop or two around us. I could see that they were likely to pass by the far edge of this pond and by the silhouetted tree, so I did a “landscape on the fly,” shooting handheld with a 100-400mm zoom as the birds came into the composition that I quickly found.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

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