Tag Archives: barn

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, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Winter Geese, San Joaquin Valley Farm

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Winter Geese, San Joaquin Valley Farm
Winter Geese, San Joaquin Valley Farm

Winter Geese, San Joaquin Valley Farm. San Joaquin Valley, California. December 22, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

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.
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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: Architecture, Photographs: Urban/Street, Photographs: Utah

Room for the Big Deep Bend

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Room for the Big Deep Bend
Room for the Big Deep Bend

Room for the Big Deep Bend. Koosharem, Utah. October 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Scowercroft’s Never Rip Overalls – Room for the Big Deep Bend

At about the time I made this photograph, we were staying in Torrey, Utah for a few days. Instead of doing the obvious thing and heading east to visit Capitol Reef National Park again, we headed west towards points unknown but including the Fish Lake area. We passed through small towns whose lives seemed more divorced from the tourist trade than others we had been through along route 12, and eventually turned off the main highway to head up to Fish Lake. It turned out that, at least partially as a result of my decision to not do too much research ahead of time, we had missed the main fall color season there and that, in fact, the whole place was pretty much shutting down for the season. We poked around a bit here before reversing direction and heading back to highway 24.

Rather than end our exploration quite so soon, we continued on along highway 24, soon turned off into the Valley where Koosharem is located. I cannot recall now what drove the decision to go there – perhaps the unusual name of the place or maybe the possibility of getting to mountains on the far side of the valley – but there we went. We initially pretty much drove right through Koosharem and on out into the country on the other side of town, but we soon stopped and decided that this was not the direction we really wanted to go. We turned around and headed back towards Koosharem. This time a few things caught our attention, including the plain architecture of certain buildings in the town and the surprising – to us, anyway – appearance of this antiquated looking, though clearly kept up, sign on the side of this building next to a leave littered parking area that also held an ATV and some sort of small trailer. I wondered about this sign and the advertising copy it contained, and I later found out that Scowercroft and Sons was a fairly large manufacturer of clothing centered in Ogden.

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.
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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.