Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Outside The Vesuvio Cafe

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Outside The Vesuvio Cafe
A lone man stands outside the entrace to a cafe in a graffiti-covered San Francisco alley at night

Outside The Vesuvio Cafe. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A lone man stands outside the entrace to a cafe in a graffiti-covered San Francisco alley at night.

The end of Daylight Savings Time — which I look forward to every year! — opens up additional night opportunities for me, especially with it comes to night street photography. I live close enough to San Francisco that I can get there and back by rail, which is a better option in most cases than driving, provided that I can return before it gets too late. Now that the sun is setting at close to 5:00 PM I have time to photograph twilight and early darkness — typically the best time for this sort of photography — and still catch a reasonably early train back home.

This week I took advantage of this change for the first time this fall, heading up to The City to arrive there in the early afternoon, photographing for a few hours in daylight (albeit muted by fog), and then sticking around as day changed to night. Photographing in such a location is almost visually overwhelming. There are details everywhere — people, shops, passing traffic, buildings, and more — and it can be hard to make visual sense out of them. On top of that, everything is in a constant state of flux, so there is often little time to carefully consider a photography. Instead, one operates by instinct, working quickly and knowing that only a small percentage of exposures will be worthwhile. As I walked up toward the North Beach area I looked up an alley and spotted this fellow standing alone in this graffiti-covered alley as the artificial lighting began to supplant the natural light.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Shall We Dance?

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Shall We Dance?
Two sandhill cranes begin their dance ritual.

Shall We Dance? © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two sandhill cranes begin their dance ritual.

From what I’ve read and observed, the striking “dancing” behavior of sandhill cranes is often (but not necessarily always?) part of a mating ritual. If you watch a large flock of the birds — or are lucky when viewing a smaller group, as I was here — you will quickly spot this behavior as it stands out from the other, largely passive behavior of the birds. (They mostly appear to either stand there, eat, or walk slowly.) A couple of birds approach one another, wings open up, and they hop straight up into the air.

When I photographed this group I was near a well-known crane observation location in California’s Central Valley. (Some of those are fine places to see these magnificent birds, especially if they are new to you.) However, I had moved away from that spot and was out looking for birds elsewhere when I came upon a group that was standing in the remnants of a field whose crops had been knocked down. I stopped, stood behind my car so as to be less likely to disturb the birds, and began watching and photographing.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Egret, Morning Light

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Great Egret, Morning Light
A great egret in California’s Central Valley

Great Egret, Morning Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A great egret in California’s Central Valley.

Way back when I was a college student I first “discovered” egrets. I was in a general education science course that consisted of a sequence of short seminars on various subjects, and the professor teaching one on ecology was obviously an egret fanatic. I don’t recall many specifics from the course, but I recall his passion for “snowy egrets.” Later on, as a dedicated cyclist, I often rode past creeks and canals in the Bay Area where I spotted great egrets (not the same critter as the snowy egret), often simply resting but sometimes in flight. At that time I regarded them as exotic birds, since they were still new to me.

Of course, I eventually learned that they are all over California, wherever there are wetlands — from the Pacific shoreline to the Central Valley. As I learned more about other birds — cranes, geese, herons, ibises — I came to regard the egret as a much less exotic bird. Yet, there is nothing quite like the flight of a great egret, with that long neck, the pure white plumage, and the gigantic wingspan. This one managed to stay put on the ground long enough for me to take its picture on a recent, first-of-the-season bird photography foray into the Central Valley.

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 and Amazon.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Before Dawn

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Before Dawn
Soft pre-dawn light on a Sierra Nevada landscape of peaks, granite, and water

Before Dawn. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft pre-dawn light on a Sierra Nevada landscape of peaks, granite, and water.

Truth be told, this was actually more “right at dawn” than “before dawn,” but given the light that comes to this spot a bit later — and the fact that I had been up and out there for a while already — it had a before-dawn feelings. So I’ll leave the title as is! The camera position was less than a minute’s walk from my campsite in this 11,000′ Eastern Sierra backcountry valley where we spent a week at the end of August and during the first couple of days of September. This late season period is always my favorite in the Sierra high country — a sort of last breath of summer with plenty of hints of the autumn transition that is on its way.

These very early mornings have a “two-edged sword” quality about them. Objectively speaking, it is almost always a bit of a challenge to persuade myself to unzip my sleeping bag in pre-dawn darkness and cold to start the process of suiting up, collecting equipment, emerging from the tent, and heading out to be ready for the early light. Subjectively speaking, once you do it the results are virtually always well worth it — for the photographs, of course, but also for the quiet beauty of these first moments of the new day.

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

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