Tag Archives: brown

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Brown Pelicans, Fog, Water

July 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large flock of brown pelicans flies above the Pacific Ocean on a foggy summer morning

I have a thing about pelicans. They seem to me to stand apart from other birds along the California coast, most often coasting sedately on the wind, either high above as they pass along and above coastal cliffs or else down so close to the water that it seems like they will touch it. I have learned to watch for them, and I know of some places where it is likely that I’ll be able to see them close up, often by going to places high along cliff-top bluffs along which they frequently fly.

This large group completely surprised me — they came out of the blue, and I had not even been thinking about pelicans as I finished photographing a landscape scene from the tripod. I was just about as unprepared as possible for photographing birds in flight. Everything on the camera was set to manual — focus, shutter speed, aperture — and the camera had been in live view mode and on a low ISO. I was at the back of my car removing the camera from the tripod to put it away and probably was in the middle of collapsing the tripod legs when I looked up and saw a huge flock of pelicans just above the roadway to my south. I knew I had just seconds to reconfigure the camera before they arrived at my position — at least I had a long lens attached already! — so I did what I often do in these cases. I ignored the birds as I instinctively went through a bird photography set-up routine as quickly as I could: auto-focus on, stabilization on, camera in aperture priority mode (that’s a long story), ISO jacked up to 800. The only thing I forgot was shifting into burst mode, but that isn’t totally necessary. Finishing this quick sequence, I looked up to find the birds just about at my position, raised the camera, quickly tried to frame the birds against the background of the foggy Pacific, and made a few quick exposures before they moved out of range and faded into the fog.

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, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Pelicans Along the Coast

May 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A line of pelicans flies along the Point Lobos Reserve coastline

Brown pelicans are probably my favorite Pacific coast birds, and I often like to photograph them when I visit the nearby Pacific Ocean shoreline. However, that’s not at all what I was at Point Lobos to photograph on this late April morning. I was more in a landscape or seascape frame of mind. That said, this photograph is an example of how things most definitely do not happen in a slow, considered, or contemplative manner when shooting landscape subjects.

I was thinking about how to try to photograph the elements of very choppy near-shore water, the further rocks that we partially obscured by mist and spray, the subtle shadings of the offshore fog bank, and the blue tones of sky. I decided to use a long lens and try to line up something that included nearby shoreline elements juxtaposed with the more distant rocks. I wasn’t having an easy time coming up with a composition that I liked. I must have momentarily looked up from the camera, because I recall spotting this line of pelicans flying up from the south and thinking that if I could just operate fast enough I might be able to get them in the frame. Being set for landscape (manual exposure and focus, live view, small aperture, on the tripod), that meant trying to quickly and intuitively make a whole bunch of quick changes. I must have managed to do so just in time to squeeze off three frames as the line of birds passed through this gap in the rocks and continued on.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Imaginary Landscapes, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelicans and Cormorants – Point Lobos

January 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Something a bit different today – I’m bundling three wildlife photographs into a single post. As I queue this message in advance on an early September morning, it appears that I have enough photographs ready for posting to carry me through October! I think I can afford to put three in this post!

All three were made from the same point on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean at Point Lobos, where I had gone – on Labor Day! – primarily to do landscape/seascape photography. It was an interesting and slightly unusual day. Tropical monsoonal moisture had been streaming over the area for a few days, which is not quite a typical pattern in this area, and the morning started out cloudy. Although it was Labor Day, a bit day for travel and tourism, I arrived early enough that things were still quiet.

On a more typical Point Lobos shooting day, at least one without fog, I would likely complete my work and leave by or well before noon. But the broken overcast allowed interesting and filtered light to continue well into the early afternoon, so I stuck around. After shooting in the forest along the north shore – much easier in filtered than in direct light – I decided I would make a loop along the high bluffs on my way back to my car. I came to this spot just as a very large flock of pelicans floated past below, barely skimming the tops of the almost glassy-calm ocean. With filtered top-light and a good vantage point, I decided to put on the long lens and see what might fly by. Here are a couple of photographs of pelicans and cormorants flying right above the water.

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

Marsh Pond and Trees

December 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Reflected fall colors of trees and grasses at a flooded California Central Valley marsh.

One more photograph from my late-November “wild goose chase” to California’s Central Valley. My main goal was probably to photograph migratory birds, including geese, but that never keeps me from also photographing the landscape. Although the skies were completely clear when I left home well before dark for the two-hour drive to this place, when I arrived there a thick fog was developing in this seasonal marshland… which is just what I had hoped for! The final 15 minutes of my drive were in mostly thick fog, and when I actually arrived the early morning light was almost completely muted by fog.

A bit later this morning, after my first circuit of the place, as I began a second lap around the ponds and marshes, the thick fog had given way to a soft atmospheric haze that allowed some sun to penetrate but which also muted the intensity of the autumn colors of grasses and cottonwood trees and other plants. For a few minutes I took off my wildlife photographer hat and put on my well-worn landscape photographer hat (you didn’t know I carried multiple hats, did you?!) and photographed the isolated trees along the levees between the marshes.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: brown

Brown Pelicans, Fog, Water

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Pelicans and Cormorants – Point Lobos

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Marsh Pond and Trees

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

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