Tag Archives: agriculture

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Coastal Farm, Burned Ridge

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Coastal Farm, Burned Ridge
Foggy morning at a coastal far at the base of hill burned by recent wildfires.

Coastal Farm, Burned Ridge. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Foggy morning at a coastal far at the base of hill burned by recent wildfires.

On one hand, this is a pleasant enough scene. I had headed to the California coast just north of Santa Cruz for the morning. This is one of the closest coastal locations to me, and I can be in sight o the ocean in a bit over a half hour or so. It was a typical late-spring coastal morning, with thick fog around the peaks as I drove over, and “high fog” (aka “low clouds”) all along the coast. The fog breaks up first over land, and along the this edge of the fog there is often lovely light — mixed sun and shadow, misty atmosphere, and a general soft glow. The bucolic little farm sits against the base of coastal hills, on a flat area near small lagoons.

But there’s something else in this photograph that you may have noticed if you looked closely. That far, upper ridge should be shrouded in forest trees… not the bare, skeletal remains of trees destroyed by last year’s wildfires in the Big Basin region. As a Californian, I’m used to the late-summer and early-autumn wildfire season. In the past decade or so, however, it has become worse and more widespread as the combination of unusual heat and drought have stressed the landscape. This past fire season all kinds of places burned where don’t usually expect to see such huge fires, including locations like this one where the charred forests extend to within sight of the ocean, and in a few cases all the way to it.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Central Valley Winter Sky

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Central Valley Winter Sky
Pre-sunrise winter sky and thin fog above Central Valley wetlands.

Central Valley Winter Sky. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pre-sunrise winter sky and thin fog above Central Valley wetlands.

These days it is hard to precisely put my finger on the character of California’s Great Central Valley, comprised of the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys and the delta where they merge with the San Francisco Bay. Many years ago a drive though the valley was all about agricultural communities, but today things are less homogeneous. Some areas seem more like extensions of the urban San Francisco Bay Area — see towns along the busy I80 corridor and the “bedroom communities” from which long-distance drivers commute in each day. Other towns further into the Valley, including many along Highway 99, have become so large that their agricultural roots seem more distant. To be sure, agriculture remains pervasive in the Valley, as a drive though almost any portion of it will make clear.

Among the features that continue to define this valley for me are its flat geography and the vast expanse of uninterrupted sky. This photograph focuses on both. I chose to place the horizon very close to the bottom of the frame since that’s were it is when we look up at skies like the one in this photograph. It was very early on a late-winter morning, before the sun had come up. The light was blue and thin dawn tule fog was dissipating above these wetlands.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Clearing the Channel

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Clearing the Channel
Equipment poised to clear a channel in agricultural land, Central Valley.

Clearing the Channel. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Equipment poised to clear a channel in agricultural land, Central Valley.

As I queue up this photograph for posting in the next week or two at the website, it seems oddly appropriate that I’m sharing a winter photograph on the final day before autumn begins. My photographic interests evolve seasonally, and I’m usually thinking a season or two into the future. These Central Valley landscape, along with the migratory birds that visit them each year, become my focus in the late autumn and winter.

Aside from the current — and deeply concerning — climate changes, there are variations from year to year. In the Central Valley they might be seen in the onset of the first rain, the overall humidity of a season, and whether or not there is enough rain to leave flood pools in the lowlands. There were back in this year, and I made this photograph on a very foggy morning, when I came across a piece of equipment staged to clear out one of the flooding channels in an agricultural region of the 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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Photographs: Central California

Dawn Fog, Central Valley

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Dawn Fog, Central Valley
Dawn fog rises from a drainage canal in California Central Valley agricultural country.

Dawn Fog, Central Valley. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn fog rises from a drainage canal in California Central Valley agricultural country.

This area of California’s Central Valley, not far from Sacramento, is a somewhat special place for me despite its relatively mundane appearance. It isn’t a park, you won’t find it on any maps, it is at the terminus of a narrow dead-end road. But it is the place where I “discovered” the state’s migratory birds and began photographing them. I had not really been interested in the subject at all until one morning I had a chance encounter with a colleague in the coffee line at my college. She told me I should go look at this place — “There are lots of birds.” For some reason, a few days later I arose well before dawn and drove a couple of hours to take a look..

She was right. There were lots of birds. Clouds of them, flying in all directions. I more or less had no idea what any of them were — I think I simply figured they were all “geese” — but I was hooked. (In fact I saw cranes, tundra swans, ibises, egrets, and, yes, lots of geese.) On this later trip I paused out on the little road and photographed back toward the early morning sky as fog rose from the water in an irrigation channel.

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.

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