Tag Archives: dawn

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Cranes, Dawn Clouds

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Cranes, Dawn Clouds
A flock of sandhill cranes flies beneath dawn clouds

Cranes, Dawn Clouds. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of sandhill cranes flies beneath dawn clouds.

When I began photographing (mostly) migratory birds in the Western United States I was largely ignorant about what I was seeing. One of my first bird photography forays was essentially an accident. I happened to run into a friend in a coffee stand line one morning and she (who is a true “birder”) happened to say, more or less, “I think you might like to go visit this place I know of.” Given the way I sometimes work, that serendipitous nudge was sufficient to get me to drive a few hours before dawn the following weekend to visit this place I’d never heard of before. I arrived. There were tons of birds. (And I discovered the power of the sound of the birds, too!) I had no idea what I was seeing, but I liked it and I made photographs. I was hooked.

As I started to edge over toward an active compulsion to photograph birds more seriously I began to recall a earlier hints about this world that I had ignored. One was all the way back in a college “natural science” short course, where the prof (who seemed a bit “odd” to me then) went on about snowy egrets (which I mostly ignored) and made us read Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac.” I didn’t fully “get” Leopold’s book at the time, but it planted a seed. (Re-reading it years later I understood more fully the power of Leopold’s vision and his writing, and I recommend the book.) One thing that I DID retain from reading that book was an idea that there was something special about sandhill cranes, which were among the birds that I finally discovered in the real world on that first morning when I acted on my friend’s coffee line suggestion. The birds in this photograph are sandhill cranes, which seem to me increasingly to be magical birds. In fact it is their characteristic cry that is my strongest audio association with the places where wild birds are found. I photographed this group very early in the morning as their trajectory took them below the edge of dawn-tinged clouds.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Wetland Plants, Dawn

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Wetland Plants, Dawn
Water plants grow in a wetland pond, photographed just before sunrise, california, usa, north, america, mnwr, nature, landscape, central, san joaquin, valley

Wetland Plants, Dawn. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Water plants grow in a wetland pond, photographed just before sunrise.

California is a state of astonishingly diverse landscapes, and quite a few of them can seem almost monumental — the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the vast expanses of deserts, the long Pacific coast shoreline, the redwood forests, and more. These are the subjects that often attract visitors, and I’m not immune to their attractions either. In fact, I’ve spent years photographing all of them, and I continue to do so. But as a person who has lived nearly his entire life in the state, I have learned — sometimes rather slowly! — that there are other, more subtle landscapes that are also quite beautiful.

Wetland scenes like this one are among those that might easily be overlooked at first. In fact, I was guilty of overlooking them for decades, even though I had opportunities to get to know them. It was only in the past decade or some that I became entranced by them, often as a side-effect of photographing other subjects that brought me there. They are found all over the state — near the mouths of rivers, in the shallows surrounding San Francisco Bay and similar bodies, it various flatlands. I made this photograph in a place that most folks looking for California beauty would not visit — a quiet place in an agricultural area where winter rains collect in shallow ponds. I was there on a quiet morning, arriving before dawn when the first light was coming to the eastern sky and the colors reflected on the surface of the still water.

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 and Amazon.

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Dawn Clouds, Reflection

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Dawn Clouds, Reflection
Dawn light on clouds, reflected in a wetland pond

Dawn Clouds, Reflection. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn light on clouds, reflected in a wetland pond

Sometimes the morning world surprises you. This was one of those times. I went to this place hoping that I might be ahead of an incoming weather front that was approaching from the northwest, but as the first light began to glow it was clear that I was going to be under the clouds. They covered almost the entire sky and promised to produce pretty gray conditions.

However, I did notice a very thin opening far to the east, between a mountain range and the far edge of the cloud shield. This is a condition which can, somewhat ironically, produce a brief burst of spectacular color right at sunrise (or sunset, if the break is in the west) that can be truly stunning. Basically, against a backdrop of largely dark conditions, the light will briefly shine upwards onto the clouds just as the sun reaches the horizon, sometimes producing some of the most intense light you’ll see — though the effect typically lasts only a few minutes and then the “lights go out” again quite quickly. On this morning I was next to a shallow body of water, so the show was twice as good — the colorful sky was reflected on the surface of that post.

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

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 and Amazon.
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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: Wildlife

Toward Morning Light

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Toward Morning Light
A flock of sandhill cranes flies toward the morning light

Toward Morning Light. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of sandhill cranes flies toward the morning light

This group of sandhill cranes was flying almost into the early morning sun — it was actually just enough to one side to illuminate the side of the birds that was facing me. As the cranes came toward my position I was ready, and I tracked them as they crossed from left to right, repositioning themselves as they passed by.

Sandhill cranes hold a special place for me, and they did even before I had seen or heard them. Many years ago as  college student, an enlightened science professor assigned us to read sections of Aldo Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac.” Leopold was completely new to me at the time — my vocabulary of “nature” writers was more orientated to the Sierra Nevada. But his descriptions of the cranes and the experience of seeing them stuck with me, and perhaps made the experience more magical when I finally saw them many years later.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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