Tag Archives: country

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Redrock Country, Near Fruita

June 27, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cliffs and eroded towers near Fruita, Capitol Reef National Park

I’m a sucker for juxtapositions of mountains and cliffs, and sunlit and shadowed surfaces. (In fact, “juxtaposition” is a word I think about a lot when making photographs.) This part of the world provides these juxtapositions with a vengeance. Everywhere in the red rock country of the Southwest there are sandstone walls, lined up, building one on top of the other, standing in front of and behind each other, layered with eroded rock and soil, standing above valleys and beyond lower ridges.

We had only a brief time to photograph on this first afternoon in Capitol Reef National Park. I had arrived in the middle of the afternoon and then busied myself with setting up a tent and a few other camp chores, plus catching up on the news with my friend Dave. By the time all of these important things had been taken care of the sun was rapidly dropping toward the horizon, so we quickly headed to a nearby area to see what sort of late-day light we could find. Literally within minutes of leaving our campground (which is just to the right of the shadowed trees visible in the lower part of the photograph) we came upon this intense and saturated late-day light, with shadows starting to stretch across the valley and the low foreground ridges.

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

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

Ross’s Geese, Foggy Pasture

February 10, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese take off from a foggy San Joaquin Valley pasture

I’ve been out to the San Joaquin Valley quite a few times over the past few months, beginning in the last months of 2014, when there were not yet too many birds there, and as recently as a couple of weeks ago, when large numbers of geese and cranes had returned. (This was a bit of a relief, since many wondered where the birds had gone, especially after this string of drought years in California.)

Our visit to the valley on New Year’s Day was especially nice. Not only did a small group of us literally greet the dawn of the new year in the company of thousands of birds, but we were pleased to see the numbers of the birds had begun to increase again. Among them were the Ross’s geese, who appeared in rather large numbers. While the morning fog was still in the air, though thinning enough to let faint sun through, large groups of them had settled in on the pasture land. The birds were constantly coming and going, as new groups arrived and others left, and as they moved one spot to others nearby, often for reasons that I could not discern. In this photograph the large group still on the ground was in the process of leaving, with a new group taking to the sky every few moments.

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

White-Fronted Geese

January 25, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of white-fronted geese in flight about the San Joaquin Valley

I have probably mentioned previously that I am not by nature a “birder” type. In fact, my infatuation with photographing birds is a relatively new thing — I’ve photographed landscapes for years, but only became so interested in birds a few years ago. Because of this I’m having the wonderful experience of learning about a completely new world even though I’ve been photographing for decades! When I first went to California’s Central Valley to find and photograph birds, I didn’t quite know what I would see, but my attention was understandably attracted to the big groups of sandhill cranes and white (most Ross’s) geese.

Eventually, as I returned to these places and got to know them better, I have begun to pay more attention to critters that I either didn’t notice before or that I dismissed as not being special. The white-fronted geese (which, oddly, are mostly dark in color) fit into this group. When I was entirely focused on the white Ross’s geese, I regarded these darker birds as a sort of unwelcome intrusion — nothing special about them! Then I began to notice them more, settled in on the ground in fields, or providing a dark contrast to the white masses of Ross’s geese — and eventually I stopped ignoring them and began to include them in my photography.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Snow, Eastern Sierra

January 23, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunrise snow along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada

This is a part of California that probably impresses newcomers as being more of a desert than anything else, with rugged high elevation sagebrush country standing in front of the rocky and even more rugged eastern escarpment of the Sierra, where the creeks and lakes and forest glades of the range’s intimate landscape are too far away to be visible. I first loved the Sierra for its alpine wilderness, and back then I was not interested in places like this, but today I find them as much part of the Sierra experience as any alpine lake.

As I do every year at about this time, I was on the “east side” for the fall aspen color. And, as happens at least once every year, I was so distracted by some other element of the terrain that I forgot about aspens for a moment and went off to photograph something else. This “something else” was a combination of things. A light morning snow storm was clearing away from the highest peaks in the early morning light of this autumn day. This light was soft on the thinning clouds and snow flurries was stronger, direct, and more stark on the foreground of sage-covered desert hills

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: country

Redrock Country, Near Fruita

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Ross’s Geese, Foggy Pasture

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White-Fronted Geese

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Morning Snow, Eastern Sierra

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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.