Tag Archives: blue

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Central Valley Winter Sunset Clouds

Image 2 Comments
Central Valley Winter Sunset Clouds
Sunset clouds above a Central Valley winter pond.

Central Valley Winter Sunset Clouds. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunset clouds above a Central Valley winter pond.

Recently, as we approached the end of 2021, I revisited some photographs from around New Years day of 2020, the last New Year’s of the Before Times. As is our tradition, a group of us met to spend a couple of days photographing winter subjects, pausing to raise a toast to the New Year following a few hours of early morning photographing on the first day of the new year. If you are focused on your New Year’s Eve party plan, it may be difficult to understand, but I can’t imagine anything better than greeting the literal dawn of the new year in a wild place, accompanied by friends.

We have met on New Year’s Day for a few years, but more recently some of us have expanded our celebration to begin the day before. So we were out there photographing on New Year’s Eve Day, right into the twilight hours. Sunsets can be exactly what you expect them to be, but sometimes they toss something unexpected and remarkable your direction. That was the case on this evening, when a combination of the passing tail edge of a weather front, still air, and a very colorful sky combined to create a rather remarkable set of conditions. It was one of those moments when it almost feels like I just have to point the camera and push the shutter button. (OK, there’s a bit more to it than that, but at least the primary subject is plainly obvious.)

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron, Reflection

Image Leave a comment
Great Blue Heron, Reflection
A great blue heron on the hunt in a Central Valley pond.

Great Blue Heron, Reflection. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A great blue heron on the hunt in a Central Valley pond.

This photograph of a great blue heron comes from this season’s first visit to California’s Central Valley to photograph migratory and other birds. Such visits become a main part of my photography between December and March. The trigger for this early December trek to the Valley was a forecast of fog — and I love foggy days out in the Valley. (On the other hand, I sympathize with locals who get a bit tired of the tule fog when it sticks around for days or weeks.) While the bird populations weren’t exactly overwhelming on this visit — and the great light never quite arrived — it was great to be back in the field on this visit marking the start of a new season.

There is a tremendous variety of birds to photograph in this area. The large flocks of geese and cranes are an obvious attraction, but others have started to grow on me — the redwing and tricolor blackbirds, egrets, ibises, lots of LBBs (little brown birds) and these large and magnificent great blue herons. I almost always encounter them as solitary individuals — thought, oddly, it isn’t unusual to find them in the company of a solitary egret. That was the case with this one. It and its egret companion were busy hunting in the shallow waters of a pond. I stopped and remained in my vehicle to avoid scaring the birds, and eventually they moved quite close to me.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Sky After Autumn Snow

Image Leave a comment
Morning Sky After Autumn Snow
A cloud-speckled morning sky above the Eastern Sierra Nevada after light snow from an autumn storm.

Morning Sky After Autumn Snow. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A cloud-speckled morning sky above the Eastern Sierra Nevada after light snow from an autumn storm.Morning Sky After Autumn Snow

On this second of two autumn visits to the Eastern Sierra this season we arrived after a few days of early winter-like storms. That’s not unusual during this transition season, a time when it seems that warm and sunny autumn days may alternate with bouts of weather that feels distinctly winter-like. While the weather was in the “warm and sunny” pattern by the time we arrived, we had to alter our plans since several of the high passes were still closed by the early snow.

On our first full day there we headed up towards the base of the eastern escarpment of the range, driving up dirt roads that climbed the huge, gently sloping country below the steeper peaks, an area that is perhaps characterized as high desert. As we gained elevation and worked our way closer to the mountains the views to the north and east began to open up. Far away and beneath morning clouds remaining from the recent passage of a weather front, we could see distant snow-capped peaks, and the very summit of the closer ridge also is topped with a light coat of the early snow.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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, Photographs: Night

Mono Moonrise

Image 4 Comments
Mono Moonrise
Autumn full moon rises over Mono Lake, California.

Mono Moonrise. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn full moon rises over Mono Lake, California.

The scene is an autumn moonrise over Mono Lake, a scene that I often encounter on my fall photographic visits to the Eastern Sierra. I’m there often enough that it seems like I have this opportunity almost every year. I had been photographing more typical autumn subjects earlier in the day — largely the fall colors of aspen trees — but I decided to finish that activity early enough to get myself to a likely location to see and photograph the moonrise over the lake. These days, with the help of various digital tools, we can come very close to putting ourselves in precisely the right spot at precisely the right time. On this evening the moon rose in early twilight, but I continued photographing until it became quite dark.

On a technical note, there are some challenges to including the full moon in a photograph made after dark. The biggest issue is that the moon is a lot brighter than the landscape — the landscape is in darkness but it is essentially noon on the moon! There are ways to deal with this, one of which is to photograph before the landscape becomes completely dark, and I did that here. But I was pushing that boundary a bit, and I was initially unable to get the balance between the moon and the dark landscape that I was looking for. However, as sometimes happens, the sophistication of post-processing software advanced, most notably with the introduction of some powerful new selection tools in Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW. (Despite the popularity of Lightroom, I’m still a Bridge/ACR/Photoshop user.) These tools enabled me to make some important adjustments to the dark portions of this image while retaining detail in the moon. (NOTE: This is a re-working of a photograph that I had previously shared back in 2019.)

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

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