Tag Archives: black

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Desert Light and Shadow

April 27, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light illuminates dust filled air above desert mountains and valley

Please indulge me as I continue to engage in my obsession with a series of photographs of this scene made on a special morning earlier this spring, when dark clouds gave way to light across the valley from my position high on a desert mountain ridge in Death Valley National Park.

If nothing else, sharing the series of somewhat similar photographs (this one, others posted previously, and possibly one or two more still to come) might illuminate the process of refining the way of seeing a particular subject. (Of course, to do that more completely you would also have to see photographs of the same location from previous visits over a period of years.) While I was there and the light was evolving I was very aware that the I could “see” the scene in multiple ways: Did I want to focus on the sky with its spectacular clouds? Did I want to minimize their presence to allow the luminous glow of backlit haze below them to take precedence? How much presence did I want to give to the strongly contrasting shaded mountains below me. How do the color and monochromatic interpretations compare? I still do not have final answers to those questions, but this portrait orientation view gives the luminous mountains across the valley a larger place the overall image and may more clearly present series of parallel and contrary lines in the scene.

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

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Storm, Mono Lake

August 31, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dark clouds of a massive summer thunderstorm move across Mono Lake.

This has been the “summer of the monsoon” in the Sierra Nevada. Although the range is terribly dry after four years of drought and this past winter’s truly anemic snow pack, summer has brought a greater than usual amount of monsoonal flow from the south, producing a great deal of thunderstorms and rain. In July I saw an odd juxtaposition of nearly snow free peaks and ridges that looked like late September of a dry year… along with green meadows and full ponds where the rains had fallen.

By the time of this early August visit to the Yosemite High Sierra and then a few days of backpacking on the east side of the range further south, things were drying out a bit and the foliage was taking on the usual late-August dry appearance. I camped down in Lee Vining Canyon the first night, and being close to Mono Lake I managed to head out there and make photographs after setting up camp. Thunderstorms were forming above the Sierra crest, and they had sprinkled on my camp. They then drifted east of the range and continued to build, so as I looked along this section of the north shore of Mono Lake, with Black Point and Negit Island visible in the foreground, the sky in the distance was turbulent, dark, and full of falling rain.

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

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

Black Necked Stilt Feeding

March 8, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A black necked stilt feeds in a San Joaquin Valley wetland marsh

Something that quickly becomes apparent when you are around a variety of birds, especially those that live in and around water, is the tremendous range of specific adaptations they have made in order to be successful in rather narrow ecological niches. I first recall seeing this when I was much younger and someone, probably a middle school science teacher, pointed out that birds along the San Francisco Bay shoreline often were distributed in water of varying depths that suited the lengths of their beaks and legs. The same sort of thing is visible in these California Central Valley wetlands, where some birds are adapted to dry land, others to hunting in the brush, and others to success in varying depths of water.

The black-necked stilt is a very attractive bird, with its striking white and black plumage, its thin beak, and its tremendously long red legs. It is also a highly adapted bird — those long legs and back let it forage in slightly deeper water. Most often I see them in somewhat shallower water than seen here, where the bird’s legs are visible above the water line. But this one was making maximum good use of its long legs, which are just long enough to keep it out of the water as it feeds. A moment after I made this photograph the bird took off.

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: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Tree and Morning Frost

March 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A frost-covered Yosemite tree in morning light

It was great fun to be in Yosemite Valley this past weekend for the opening of the 30th annual Yosemite Renaissance exhibition. This is the third time that I’ve had photographs in the show. (If you are in the Valley, drop by. It is in the Visitor Center Museum through May 10, after which it moves on to a couple of Central Valley locations.) The show features a wide variety of two and three-dimensional art by artists who focus on the Sierra and the park. The entry of mine that was selected this year was atypical for me — it includes people and it is humorous! I share it again here at some point, but for now I’ll just note that it features backcountry photographers engaged in an unusual activity. The show brings lots of other fun things: a chance to photograph in the Valley, opportunities to hang out with lots of photographer and artist friends.

I made this photograph on our final morning in the park. We headed out around sunrise, thinking we might find some shallow fog in meadows. There was a bit of the fog but it was dissipating quickly and we eventually ended up in this sunny meadow. I was immediately attracted to this large elm tree, covered in frost and backlit in the morning light. I made several photographs of it — and at least one other may appear here before long — and before long the air warmed and the frost melted.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: black

Desert Light and Shadow

Storm, Mono Lake

Black Necked Stilt Feeding

Tree and Morning Frost

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