Tag Archives: cottonwood

Spring Cottonwood and Sandstone Cliff

Spring Cottonwood and Sandstone Cliff - A cottonwood tree with early spring leaves stands in front of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah
A cottonwood tree with early spring leaves stands in front of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah

Spring Cottonwood and Sandstone Cliff. Zion National Park, Utah. April 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A cottonwood tree with early spring leaves stands in front of a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park, Utah.

This was my first visit to Zion National Park – believe it or not – and I had been thinking about photographing cottonwood trees against red sandstone cliffs well before we arrived. We got there in the afternoon, checked in to our lodgings, and soon went up into the main canyon on the shuttle and then hiked up toward the Narrows from there.

It was a special and unusual experience for me to be photographing in an entirely new place, and to have very little idea of the geography of the Zion at all – I had almost intentionally avoided researching ahead of time, preferring to take it for what it was when I arrived. I was so naive that when we passed over a bridge and I looked downstream I thought, “Oh, that is the Watchman.” (For those who don’t know, the photograph of the Watchman Tower above the Virgin River, photographed from the bridge that crosses the river just inside the park is, roughly speaking, the Zion equivalent of photographing Half Dome from Sentinel Bridge in Yosemite.) We kept going, staring up at the beautiful sandstone towers and walls as the shuttle travelled up the canyon to the very end at the Temple of Sinawava, where we got off and started to walk. The walls in this very area are beautiful, and my progress up the trail was very slow as I stopped to gawk and photograph all of these wonderful new subjects, including this almost bare tree with its first spring growth. against the backdrop of the sandstone cliffs.

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.
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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.

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley - Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California's Central Valley and the Coast Range.
Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California's Central Valley and the Coast Range.

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California’s Central Valley and the Coast Range.

I made this photograph when it was almost too dark to see clearly. In fact, when I packed up and drove away a few minutes later, it was so dark that I momentarily got mildly lost on my way out of the refuge! Long after the sun had set, and at the time when perhaps the most intense sky colors appear, the migratory birds were still in flight above the Central Valley, often silhouetted against the colorful dusk sky just above the horizon.

This photograph is going to get a bit more technical explanation than usual. I had a 100-400mm telephoto on the camera at this point since I had been photographing the birds in a variety of ways, including trying to fill the frame with one or a few birds. While some might say that shooting a prime lens of this length could have some image quality advantages, this photograph wouldn’t have happened if I had been shooting, say, a 400mm prime. Since I wanted to move quickly from targeting small sections of the surroundings or even individual birds to making photographs that attempt to portray the larger landscape within which the birds are found, I frequently found myself moving quickly to much shorter focal lengths. Here, I realized that I might be able to “zoom out” and include some of the birds in flight high above the valley and the distant mountains in the context of their surroundings. So I shot this at something like 130mm. In addition, because the scene includes subjects that are not that far away (like the trees) and those at much greater distances (like the hills), depth of field was an issue with the longer focal lengths. I couldn’t shoot wide open without some excessive focus issues, so I stopped down to f/11. Think about that for a moment: shooting in extremely low light, stopped down to try to maintain some depth of field… and needing use a shutter speed allowing me to get some definition out of birds flying through the scene. This is essentially being caught between a rock and a hard place… and another rock. With the camera on the tripod, but still aimed manually, I used a shutter speed of 1/13 second and turned image-stabilization on. With all of this stuff pushing boundaries of shutter speed and aperture… my only option was to increase the ISO to 1600. For landscape work. Here’s the thing… in the end, while there was more noise in this photograph than if ISO 100 were possible, it isn’t that bad and probably wouldn’t even be visible to viewers of a print. While I’m usually persistent in my view that little technical differences among cameras don’t amount to much, in this case it was because current cameras make it possible to shoot in ways that were essentially impossible a decade ago that I could get this photograph at all.

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.
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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.

Ross’s Geese, Winter Evening

Ross's Geese, Winter Evening - Motion-blurred photograph of low-flying Ross's geese on a winter evening in California's Central Valley.
Motion-blurred photograph of low-flying Ross's geese on a winter evening in California's Central Valley.

Ross’s Geese, Winter Evening. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Motion-blurred photograph of low-flying Ross’s geese on a winter evening in California’s Central Valley.

From time to time I experiment with longer exposure photographs of birds in flight. The idea is that allowing the image to blur as the birds move might suggest their constant motion more effectively than the more typical approach of stopping the motion. Here not only was the exposure relatively long (I think it was 1/30 second) but I was shooting with a long telephoto which also amplifies the motion of subject and camera.

I’m thinking of this as a “study” for future photographs of these Ross’s geese and similar birds that will work with this idea of motion blur. Making this shot let me get a bit closer to understanding the most likely times to find the birds lifting off in the evening, and the best time to try to catch this with a bit of the last sunlight before sunset. I was also able to slightly better establish the shutter speed I would like to work with for this kind of image. The idea is to keep just barely enough shape in the birds that you can recognize what they are, but to allow the motion to blur things enough to eliminate the hyper-sharp realistic quality of the scene and to let the motion blur imply something about the actual flying motion of the birds.

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 | FacebookGoogle+ | 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.

Spring Flooding, Merced River

Spring Flooding, Merced River
Spring Flooding, Merced River

Spring Flooding, Merced River. Yosemite Valley, California. May 7, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Merced River overflows its banks during the spring runoff and floods surrounding meadows and lowlands in Yosemite Valley.

I’m tempted to go on about how the spring runoff is my favorite time of year in Yosemite Valley – but I’ve probably already written about how autumn is my favorite time, or how much I love winter in the Valley, and… :-)

In any case, there is a lot to like about spring in Yosemite Valley. For example, seasonal waterfalls that many visitors never see come to life. I believe that the thin fall across the Valley in this photograph is Sentinel Fall. There is another small one to its right in the v-shaped gully, but I do not know its name. The meadows come back to life and the trees begin to get their leaves, and there is green everywhere. Especially in a heavy snowfall year like this one, the Merced River rises as the snow begins to melt, and riverbanks overflow and meadows flood – as is happening in this photograph of a section of the river near Leidig Meadow along the north side of the Valley.

I’m surprised that there are not more photographs produced in this part of the Valley. I suppose the explanation may include the fact that few of the main iconic sights are directly visible from here, the current prohibition against parking along the road in this area, and the fact that parts of the river trail were underwater. But in the right light – which here can occur at times other than the typical early/late hours – Leidig Meadow and this curving section of the river with its shoreline trees can be very appealing, especially when the far canyon wall is muted by shadows.

I shot this a bit later in the day, not during the typical “golden hour” times at all. To get here I drove past this section of the road and walked back, alternately walking along the roadway (and occasionally leaving the narrow road as cars approached) and following the trail where it was not submerged. To make this photograph I walked down to the very edge of the rising Merced River and managed to find one spot that wasn’t too muddy.

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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.