Tag Archives: agriculture

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

Winter Geese, San Joaquin Valley Farm

January 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Flock of migratory winter geese circling above a San Joaquin Valley farm

Every winter California’s Great Central Valley becomes the home of astounding collections of migratory birds. (I’m still a bit surprised that folks from the state will travel great distances to other states to photograph some of the very same birds, when they are at their backdoor!) Historically the Central Valley (consisting of the Sacramento Valley to the north and the San Joaquin Valley to the south) supported even larger populations of birds, but as the area was developed for agriculture the majority of the wetlands were lost. However, places were set aside, and in many areas the agriculture areas become the homes of the birds in the winter.

We visited one of these protected areas late December, an area where I frequently photograph throughout the bird season. The photography in this area was good, but it still seemed like there were not as many (mostly) Ross’s geese as we would expect. We figured out why — huge numbers of them were settling in just outside the area where we usually find them, and across a nearby road on farmland. Here the flock of thousands of geese takes to the air above one of these Central Valley farms on this foggy morning.

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.

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

Sunset Virga, San Joaquin Valley

December 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Momentary sunset light on virga and clouds of an incoming late-autumn weather front above California’s San Joaquin Valley

As I mentioned in my previous post, this mid-December day was one of variable weather and sky conditions that ranged from fog to clear to mixed clouds to the arrival of a weak weather front that completely block the light at times. We spent the entire day mostly photographing migratory birds in this wetland area, but also making some landscape photographs when the birds were less available.

After a lunch break at a nearby town we returned for the afternoon and evening light and the prospective fly-in of geese and cranes. We always have an eye on the sky, trying to imagine and predict what the evening might bring, and the prospects did not look too encouraging. I love clouds… but out here too many clouds can simply kill the light that can otherwise become very interesting late in the day. As the afternoon wore on towards evening, it looked more and more like the light was perhaps not going to improve, and bands of thick clouds frequently blocked the sun, leaving mostly a sort of gray haze where we were. Occasionally the clouds did thin and we had moments of interesting light and sky, but overall things seemed to be heading in the gray direction. (This happens. If you shoot enough you will have days of utterly astonishing light, balanced by days when the light is simply blah. You make what you can from the light that you find, and usually something works.) Then, to our complete surprise, a few beams of sunset light found their way through small breaks in the clouds to our west, and for perhaps five minutes we had a light show as cloud bottoms and virga were gently lit from below, turning shades of red and pink and purple.

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

Tree, Fog, Dawn Sky

May 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone tree on pasture land of a foggy late-winter morning with pre-dawn clouds, San Joaquin Valley

Back near the beginning of March in this year that seems to have brought an early end to winter I headed out to the Central Valley to do what was likely my last migratory bird photography of the season. When I left the San Francisco Bay Area well before dawn for the trip out to the valley the skies were clear, and I was just a bit disappointed in that I prefer at least a bit of fog for this subject. The fog gods must have heard me, since as I neared my first location in a low-lying and often wet area of the valley, fog began to collect just before sunrise. It was that wonderful sort of fog that is almost opaque, but which moves around and changes enough that at least some of the time nearby subjects are visible and it is possible to see early morning clouds in the sky above.

Although my plan was to photograph birds, at first I didn’t see the birds I was most interested in (sandhill cranes and Ross’s geese), so I kept moving and eventually ended up in this flat pasture area where a few isolated trees stood along on newly green ground, with groves of trees beyond and the soft shapes of early morning clouds overhead. This soft light is a special feature of this area in the cool, damp season, and it characterizes my experience with this place. Before long the fog began to thin, the sun came out, and I found birds to photograph.

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

Trees and Pasture, Central Valley

December 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy light in clearing tule fog on solitary trees in California Central Valley pasture land

This is another in a series that might perhaps be called “accidental landscapes.” We were actually at a wildlife refuge not to photograph landscape subjects but to photograph migratory birds – mostly geese, herons, ibises, cranes, egrets and the like. Part of that activity involves driving around trying to find the darn critters! And sometimes during these drives my eyes wander over to something that is much more like a landscape than a bird. I have photographed this very tree in the past, most recently a matter of weeks earlier when I shot it from a slightly different angle that made it appear more isolated, and when it was full of a flock of red-winged blackbirds.

The first thing that attracted my attention this time was something small, the bit of warm side-light on the trunk of the foreground tree. Seeing that, I wondered how I might come up with a composition that made sense and included this little feature. First, I wanted this tree to fill a good portion of the frame. However that seemed a bit too straightforward, so I just moved around a bit until the more distant near-twin tree was just to the left of the foreground tree, being careful to not let them overlap. The photograph was shot handheld, with the same lens that stayed on my camera all day long, a 100-400mm zoom. We moved on and soon found lots of Ross’s geese on the far side of this pasture.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: agriculture

Winter Geese, San Joaquin Valley Farm

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Sunset Virga, San Joaquin Valley

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Tree, Fog, Dawn Sky

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Trees and Pasture, Central Valley

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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.