Tag Archives: birds

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

Trumpeter Swans and Clouds

December 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Four trumpeter swans on a raining day in Skagit Valley, Washington

I visited the Seattle area in early December for mostly non-photographic purposes, but found myself with with an open schedule on the day when my departing flight was not scheduled to leave until evening. I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to do some photography, so I considered street photography in downtown Seattle (plus a museum visit). Then I remembered that I had shot in Skagit Valley last year at roughly the same time and had found lots of interesting birds to photograph – trumpeter swans, eagles, snow geese, and more.

On this trip I wasn’t exactly equipped for bird photography, at least not the sort I would usually do, but I did have a 70-200mm zoom and I know it is possible to make interesting bird photographs with such a lens. So I was up fairly early for the one hour drive north. It rained off and on during my drive, and it was still mostly cloudy and gray when I arrived to find trumpeter swans in their usual spots on the winter fields. (Later I would also find some snow geese, but I’ll save that story for now.) Typically, I would photograph this subject with my 100-400mm zoom, but having nothing longer than 200mm in my bag, I had to think a bit differently about how to photograph these birds. Several strategies worked. One was to use my rental car as a “blind” and slowly and carefully position myself where they might be close enough to photograph with that lens. Another approach was to basically shoot landscape, but include the birds in the scene. The third option, used in this photograph, was to find a spot along one of the country roads where the birds were likely to pass directly overhead or nearly so and wait. These birds have a style of flight that somehow reminds me of a very large jetliner. The use a very low angle take-off, seeming almost as if they are too massive to climb much faster. But once in flight they are beautiful and graceful with their long necks and generally smooth mode of flight. In this photograph I watched as they passed in front of darker rain clouds before making the exposure, isolating the birds against the clouds and with no frame of reference on the ground.

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: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese and Sun in Fog

December 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small flock of Ross’s geese passes by the sun as it barely shines through dense Central Valley tule fog

Although photographing birds and the landscapes where they are found on a dense fog day might seem like a challenge or perhaps even a disappointment, for me it turns out that the fog makes things much more interesting. While I love seeing and photographing the migratory birds as the warm dawn light hits them, that is usually over fairly quickly. But with fog there are all kinds of interesting mysteries to explore. Birds appear on the edge of visibility, and often you may hear them but not see them. (This was especially true with sandhill cranes on this day. We often heard them, but never caught more than a faint and momentary visual sighting as they briefly emerged partially from the fog as they flew directly overhead.) The atmosphere can glow as the sun tries to push through the shallow tule fog.

At one point during this foggy morning a breeze came up and for a moment it looked like the fog might clear. It became a bit less opaque near the ground and there were occasional hints of potential light as the fog momentarily thinned. The disk of the sun became faintly visible, though it often quickly faded again from sight. When I first saw the sun I thought that since birds were flying overhead from time to time that if I was patient I just might be able to get a photograph of some of them in the fog with the faint sun behind them. You can only “plan” a photograph like this in the most general sense: the amount of fog, its thickening and thinning, and the appearance and formation of the birds are entirely out of the photographer’s control. So I wait and watch… and make a number of photographs.

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

Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog

December 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Six Ross’s geese fly above the flock on a foggy Central Valley morning

My EXIF data tells me that I must have made this photograph close to noon. In many cases, landscape and nature photographers, this one included, might well be off taking a nap (necessary after a 4:00 a.m. wake up alarm) or looking for lunch, but not on this day. There had been very thick fog when we assembled near the entrance to this Central Valley wildlife shortly after 6:00 a.m., and it showed little sign of clearing as we made our first circumnavigation of the place, looking for the birds that we could hear off somewhere in the gloom but which were quite difficult to actually see, much less photograph! By the time we worked our way around to the far end of the drive around the refuge, the fog began to thin just a bit – though the sun was still obscured – and we found our first big group of Ross’s geese, feeding and squawking wildly.

At first they mostly remained on the ground, walking en masse across the pasture land in which they had landed. Eventually we saw more of them airborne, flying in from or off to some distant place, or sometimes just moving to a different area of the pasture. Before too long, we saw the first explosive group lift-off with its shock of noise and motion as thousands of the birds lift off almost simultaneously and fill the air, sometimes so thickly that you literally cannot see through the flock at times. From then on, there was more or less steady activity of one sort or another and we had lots of opportunity to track flying birds. This group was making a turn over the flock in front of me, preparing to make their landing in the fog.

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

Trumpeter Swans, Field

December 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small group of trumpeter swans on a misty day in a Skagit Valley field, Washington

Finding myself in a wonderful place to photograph birds, but without the (rather long!) lens I would usually rely on, I had to think differently about how to photograph the migratory birds of Skagit Valley, Washington earlier this week. I was in Washington for something else entirely, but had brought along a minimal kit “just in case…” but wasn’t really thinking that bird photography might be on the agenda until plans changed and I found myself with nearly a full day free. So despite having nothing longer than 200mm, I decided to drive up there from Seattle and see what I could find.

Among the locals, I hear that the area is especially renowned for eagles – which I saw and (barely) photographed a year ago. But I’m also, and perhaps predominantly, fascinated by the snow geese and the trumpeter swans. The geese remind me of the very similar Ross’s geese that I photograph in California, but the trumpeter swans are birds that I don’t really get to see at home. While the geese collect in huge flocks of many thousands of birds, creating an audio uproar that must be heard to be believed, the swans don’t seem to be such social creatures nor nearly as noisy. When I’ve seen them, they collect in small groups, sometimes very small or perhaps including a few dozen individuals. They seem to assemble quietly – apart from the occasional “trumpeting” – and don’t do anything like the swirling, flocking behavior of the geese. Instead, even so often a couple of them will lift off – taking a long, shallow trajectory like an overloaded airliner lifting off – and then fly at low levels across fields.

Having only my “short” 200mm telephoto, it proved nearly impossible to photograph them in the usual bird photography style – trying to come as close as possible to filling the frame with a bird or two. Instead, I started by thinking about how I could incorporate the birds into the landscape. Here, near the end of an empty road, I turned onto an even emptier road and slowly drove up to where I was reasonably close to this group. I remained in the car, using it as my “blind” so as not to disturb the birds, and I sat quietly making a few photographs as they fed in the field. I decided to go with an interpretation of the subject that did not attempt for anything like objective realism, instead trying to evoke the subjective aspects of these birds, caught in a momentary beam of sunlight against a misty and rainy sky and hills.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: birds

Trumpeter Swans and Clouds

Geese and Sun in Fog

Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog

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