Tag Archives: agriculture

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Tree Farm, Skagit Valley

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Tree Farm, Skagit Valley - Dense winter trees in the grove of a tree farm, Skagit Valley, Washington.
Dense winter trees in the grove of a tree farm, Skagit Valley, Washington.

Tree Farm, Skagit Valley. Skagit Valley, Washington, February 19, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense winter trees in the grove of a tree farm, Skagit Valley, Washington.

Back in February I spent a few days in Washington state, and during this visit I had an opportunity to spend one full day photographing in lower Skagit Valley north of Seattle. Among other things, main attractions there at this time of year can include spectacular views of some of the nearby snow-covered peaks of the Cascade range (or so I’m told… ;-), impressive flocks of migratory birds including trumpeter swans and snow geese, and other birds such as owls and bald eagles. Having recently become a big fan of photographing the migratory birds of California’s Central Valley, my main goal on this visit was to photograph the geese and swans.

I arrived in the area just before sunrise – or what would have been sunrise if it hadn’t been completely socked in by clouds and intermittently raining lightly. After a bit of looking around I found a great location for photographing gigantic flocks of snow geese as they landed, collected on the ground, and then suddenly took of in huge groups. A bit later in the day my brother Richard joined me. Since he actually knows this area, having lived and photographed here for many years, I took his lead and we moved on to look for bald eagles. (Well, we also moved on to have a wonderful brunch in a nearby town first…) After a bit of driving around we came to this spot which I understand is some sort of tree farm. Among these tall, slender, straight, and tightly packed trees, we spotted a few bald eagles roosting in the upper branches. We found one beautiful bird in trees very close to the road, stopped, and began to quietly get ready to shoot – but the bird was having none of it, and it flew to other trees that were too far off for photography. However, this grove itself seemed interesting to me, and in the soft, cloudy light I like the way that the white trunks and the dense small branches appeared against the background of a further ridge.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Snow Geese and Farm Buildings

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Snow Geese and Farm Buildings - Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.
Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.

Snow Geese and Farm Buildings. Skagit Valley, Washington. February 19, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Snow geese fly low past a Skagit Valley farm, Washington.

Back in February I was fortunate to be able to spend a day photographing migratory (and other) birds in the lower Skagit Valley area in the state of Washington. For me the primary draw was the snow geese, since I had just spent several days photographing Ross’s geese in California’s Central Valley, along with the beautiful trumpeter swans that hang out in the fields in this part of Washington. I had also been alerted to the presence of bald eagles in the area.

I drove up very early in the day from the Seattle area, arriving at just about the time that would have been sunrise… if it had not been a typical gray Washington day. I passed through a small town by the highway and then headed out into this farm country, immediately spotting scattered groups of trumpeter swans, whose large white bodies stand out clearly against the intense green of the new growth in the fields. However, all of these birds were too far from the roads, so I moved on, soon passing what looked like a country produce stand in front of a fallow field that where there were some geese. I stopped – and immediately heard that striking sound of the huge flocks of geese – and got out my camera gear to see what I could do. At this point I looked around a bit more and saw flock after flock of birds high in the sky to the west and heading this direction. Very soon all of these flocks began land on this very field where I had fortuitously stopped and in minutes there were tens of thousands of geese on the ground and many more flying routes above and around the field.

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.
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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Tree Farm and Hills

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Tree Farm and Hills - The bare winter trunks of a tree farm against a backdrop of low hills, Skagit Valley, Washington
The bare winter trunks of a tree farm against a backdrop of low hills, Skagit Valley, Washington

Tree Farm and Hills. February 19, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The bare winter trunks of a tree farm against a backdrop of low hills, Skagit Valley, Washington.

This is perhaps a bit of a subtle photograph. While shooting in the Skagit Valley of Washington, my brother Richard and I took a break from photographing trumpeter swans and snow geese and went looking for bald eagles, which hang out nearby in large numbers. We eventually found several of them in various trees in the area, including in the upper branches of these large groves of trees that I think may be poplars that are part of a tree farm. (Our first attempt with the eagles was a classic. We saw a beautiful bird in a tree at the edge of the grove right alongside the road. We stopped. We carefully fitted the right long lenses. We got out. We aimed… and the eagle flew away.)

While standing around looking for the birds I was fascinated by the regular patters of these very slender and closely spaced trees in the tree farms that were along the road. The light was very muted due to overcast, and the trees themselves don’t provide a whole lot of light/dark contrast. I found a section of the grove that I liked and then worked my position so that I could get the diagonal of the more distant and out of focus ridge to cut across the background and angle down to the right.

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.

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

Row of Trees, Evening

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Row of Trees, Evening - A row of bare trees stands next to a pond in evening light at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Central Valley, California.
A row of bare trees stands next to a pond in evening light at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Central Valley, California.

Row of Trees, Evening. Central Valley, California. February 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A row of bare trees stands next to a pond in evening light at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Central Valley, California.

While photographing migratory birds in early February at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge in California’s Central Valley, just before sunset there was a lull in the “bird action,” and I realized that I had neglected to photograph much of anything besides the birds. With this in mind, I left the edge of the ponds where we had been shooting, and I took a short walk along a nearby trail that went out into some brushy areas that generally seemed sort of nondescript. Except… I’m fascinated by brushy, scrubby trees and brush and I’m always challenged when it comes to thinking about how to make photographic sense of this subject. In the right light the shapes and subtle colors can be quite interesting, but it can also be tricky to find a composition in the dense growth.

As I walked I passed along a small pond, and at first I noticed the reflection of a tree whose trunk was branching out in many different directions and its mirrored image in the water. Then I saw this row of barren trees, which I assume might have been planted along the levee as some sort of wind break. Their straight forms were tall and parallel, except that here and there this orderly form was broken up by a trunk or branch pointing off in some odd direction and creating a bit of visual dissonance. Since it was the lens I already had on the camera for photographing birds, I made this landscape photo with what might seem to be the least likely of landscape lenses, a 100-400mm zoom!

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.
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.