Tag Archives: dawn

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

Tundra Swans, Dawn

February 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

: Tundra swans in dawn light above the Central Valley of California.

Tundra swans in dawn light above the Central Valley of California.

These photographs (there are others) of tundra swans in flight above the Central Valley of California near the end of Woodbridge Road are the result of some combination of foresight, planning, and good fortune. Mostly good fortune. :-)

The “foresight and planning” part involves knowing that huge numbers of beautiful migratory birds make their homes in the Central Valley every winter, in figuring out (by “poking around” and with the help and advice of friends) the locations of some of the good locations for seeing the birds, getting up very early and driving long distances before the sun comes up, having the right equipment to photograph them, and knowing how to use it. The good fortune part, however, cannot be diminished. You would have to be crazy to think that you have much control at all over the elements of such scenes. Not only are the weather and related atmospheric conditions essentially whatever they are, but the bird tend to go wherever they want, whenever they want. They are notoriously resistant to shouted commands to come back around a second time, fly past at a lower elevation, group themselves more closely, or position themselves nicely in the light. :-)

This was one of quite a few groups of birds that flew over us this morning. Sometimes the group might consist of two birds, sometimes of too many to count. They might be low or high, close or far. These approached in nearly perfect light – the sun had just risen and the low-angle light illuminated the birds from below and, to some extent, through their feathers. As they approached I was shooting in “landscape” (horizontal) orientation, since that works more often than not for flocks that are strung out lengthwise. I squeezed off one shot in that mode, then realized that they were about to line up vertically above me as they passed, so I quickly shifted the camera by ninety degrees and worked to frame them in the viewfinder as the flew past.

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Migratory Birds, Ponds, Pre-Dawn Light

February 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Large flocks of migratory birds stand in ponds and take to the sky in predawn light.

I almost didn’t stop to photograph these birds and this scene. I had just driven close to two hours to meet a friend and photograph in this area, and I was running late. (It is a long story involving an early alarm, someone sleepily turning the alarm off as to not wake his spouse, and that same someone beginning to form a vague thought that an alarm should have gone off or something, and then looking at the clock and realizing that it was now nearly one hour later than planned.) I turned off the main highway and called my friend to see where he was and then started down Woodbridge road to his location. Within a minute or see I passed an official-looking viewing spot, saw a bunch of other photographers, thought about stopping, but decided to continue on.

Shortly after this – probably within a matter of seconds – I passed by these flooded fields and saw huge number of birds, sandhill cranes and who knows what others, crowding the ponds in numbers I had not seen before. I quickly pulled over, assembled some camera stuff, all the while listening to the absolutely astonishing sound of thousands of migratory birds greeting the dawn. As amazing as the visual spectacle of these birds can be, I am at least as impressed by the wild sounds that they make, especially when assembled in these huge flocks. In any case, I quickly attached my long lens to my camera and my camera to the tripod and lined up a shot out over the ponds and towards the deeply colorful predawn sky just as flocks of birds took off and strung out across the sky.

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

Tree and Bird-Filled Morning Sky

February 3, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Giant flocks of migratory birds fill the winter sky above the Central Valley of California.

There are times when the number of migratory birds visible in California’ Central Valley approaches the level of unbelievable. As we photographed them near the end of January, at one point we noticed that there are almost always more birds than you think you see. Your attention might be caught by a formation of birds flying not too far above. But if you look beyond them you might see another formation up higher. And if you look more closely you might find even more birds higher and further away. For me it is common to review a photograph that I made of one grouping only to discover many, many more that I had not even seen when I made the exposure.

During a lull in the action directly overhead, I looked a bit further out to the east and noticed what might best be described as a “cloud of birds” rising from an area perhaps a mile or more away. At first the cloud stuck together, but soon it began to thin and separate into smaller groups. If you look more closely at this little jpg version of the image, you may still be able to see even more birds than were apparent at first glance. The sidelight on the tree and the plants growing around the pond comes from very early morning sunlight shortly after dawn.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Cook Bank Ruins, Rhyolite

January 21, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The ruins of the Cook Bank in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, with barren desert hills under a pre-sunrise sky.

This was the closest to the winter solstice that I’ve visited Rhyolite, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by several things. First, the sun came up not only later, but also a bit further south along the horizon – and the light that would usually strike these ruins at sunrise was blocked for a while by a large hill that sits next to the town. Second, it was cold! Third, no one else was there at sunrise! This is a bit unusual since in the Death Valley high season (which arrives a bit later in the year), Rhyolite can be a pretty popular place… for a ghost town… in the middle of the desert… in Nevada. :-)

Because I have photographed here several times before and for the reasons mentioned above, I took a bit of a different approach to photographing the place this time. The winter light, some high clouds, and the different point along the horizon of the sun rise meant that the light was quite different from what I’ve occasionally had to work with in the past. At first I was a bit disappointed to realize that the direct dawn light was not going to strike the old Cook Bank and other nearby buildings. But when some clouds to the east obscured the direct light and high, thin overhead clouds begin to pick up color and fill in the shadows, I saw that other interesting lighting was going to make up for it. At the moment that I made this photograph, those clouds to the east (right) of my position beautifully softened what might otherwise have been some stark and harsh light on the pinnacles beyond the town. They also created an unusual and beautiful quality of light for a few moments – a reddish-pink quality from the light reflected from the clouds but with a few soft quality.

I decided to shoot from a distance with a long lens so as to control the position of the ruins against the background hills, and the longer focal length makes these hills more prominent than they would be if I shot the building with a shorter focal length from a closer position. This also allowed me to more carefully eliminate some distracting elements that invariably appear at old sites like this. (The first times I visited, access to most of the ruins was quite unimpeded. Now fences have been erected around some of them. Part of me regrets the loss of access, but the greater part of me understands that this will allow these buildings to be around longer so that more people will get to see them. I stayed behind the fences.) If you look around on the web a bit, you can find some wonderful old photographs of this town when it was a bustling place with thousands of residents, and when the Cook Bank was a very impressive and modern-for-the-time building.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: dawn

Migratory Birds, Ponds, Pre-Dawn Light

Tree and Bird-Filled Morning Sky

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