Tag Archives: evening

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: White Mountains

From the Panamints to the Sierra, Evening

April 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Sierra Nevada in evening light as seen from Aguereberry Point in Death Valley National Park’s Panamint Range.

I made this photograph from Aguereberry Point shortly before sunset. Aguereberry Point is a lonely prominence over 6000′ above Death Valley, high in the Panamint Mountain range, a place of astonishing panoramic views – and often some significant winds. As I drove the gravel road to the point late in the afternoon I saw three or four other vehicles heading the other direction, but when I arrived at the point a bit more than an hour before sunset no one else was there.

Having photographed here a few times previously, I am becoming more familiar with the challenges and the opportunities of shooting here. One of the challenges – as is the case in many spots in Death Valley – is that certain subjects seem to be “photographable” at very specific times and only for short intervals. One of the most interesting views from Aguereberry is southeast down into Trail Canyon and on to the lower slopes of Wildrose Peak beyond. This is wild, rugged, austere terrain. However, because it lies on the east side of this range the light changes quickly from a washed out blast of daytime sun to sudden deep shadows as the sun drops behind the higher ridges of the Panamints. (Trail Canyon is not seen in this photograph.)

Another challenge is that, impressive and overwhelming as the scale of this grand scene is, it can be difficult to pull interesting compositions out of it. I tend to work with longer lenses here, both to isolate smaller areas out of the huge landscape and to compress distance. In this photograph, the silhouetted crest of the highest part of the Sierra Nevada range is on the horizon, with the intervening ridges of the Panamint Range and others probably including the Inyo Mountains and the ridge just west of Panamint Valley.

And, since I tend towards those large and long lenses… wind is an issue! And on top of Aguereberry Point there is nothing to stop the often strong winds of Death Valley. On this evening the winds were howling, so I found a spot below some rocks where it was a bit less windy and then spent a lot time waiting for momentary lulls in the wind when I could make photographs.

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

Flock of Snow Geese, Winter Sky

March 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of snow geese against the partly cloudy winter sky above the Merced National Wildlife Reserve, California.

Yes, yet another in the series of photographs of migratory birds above the Merced National Wildlife Reserve made on a winter evening in February. While I missed the “fly in” (though saw it happening a ways north of my position) I did watch hundreds and hundreds of birds of all types pass overhead. Every time I would start to wonder “where are the birds?” or worry about whether I would miss the fly in, another flock would appear and traverse the sky above me.

It was my good fortune – certainly little careful planning was involved! – to be out here during a brief evening window of interesting light and sky as a storm cleared. In fact, as I drove towards the Refuge I at first thought that some of the larger clouds to the west might block the evening light or even bring a bit of rain. However, as sunset approached the clouds continued to thin and I ended up with a beautiful sky full of broken clouds that were gently illuminated as the day ended.

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

Silhouettes, Flock of White Faced Ibises

March 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

A flock of white-faced ibises is silhouetted against evening blue sky and clouds above the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

On this winter evening I visited, for the first time, the Merced National Wildlife Reserve on a detour I took while returning home from a few days photographing in Death Valley. This winter I have (finally!) started to become aware of the amazing annual influx of migratory birds in California’s Central Valley and I managed to get out there a couple of times to view and photograph the magnificent flocks of birds. Being new at this, I have been working at figuring out just how to photograph this subject, and I’ve come up with a few approaches that seem to work, though I have a lot to learn. In this case, I had figured out that if I just picked a spot and waited that eventually flocks would fly over my position, and that I would have a chance of photographing them against the evening sky and clouds. Being almost completely ignorant when it comes to identifying these birds – but no less impressed with them because of this – I had virtually no idea what I was photographing in the moment when I tracked the birds and made the exposures. In fact, it wasn’t until later that I noticed the wonderful curved bills of these birds and then found out from my friend Tom Clifton (who does know how to identify these critters) what they were.

As the birds approach I work to synchronize my camera motion with the speed and direction of their flight. I try to keep them in the frame, and preferably in the frame in a way that might create an interesting composition. And while I do that I try to keep some attention on the background against which they fly and some small remaining bit of my attention on the technical matter of keeping at least one of them under an autofocus point in the camera’s viewfinder. As a flock approaches, things seem to start out fairly slowly and it may seem like the birds are taking a long time to arrive. But as they get closer – especially when shooting with a 400mm focal length and double-especially when they are as close as this flock – the action speeds up, and as they pass overhead it is all I can do to keep them centered in the viewfinder as I let the camera’s burst mode do its job at the right moment.

There are things about the experience that the camera cannot capture. The cold and damp of a Central Valley winter evening might be evoked by the right sort of landscape photograph, but not by a photograph like this one – yet this is an integral part of the experience. Even more than that, the sound of these birds, alone or in huge groups, sticks in my mind as much or more than the visual image. If you have been there and heard it, perhaps a photograph may cause you to recall it.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Melting Ice, Gaylor Lake and the Cathedral Range

March 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The distant Cathedral Range rises above the melting ice of Gaylor Lake, Yosemite National Park.

Near the end of June last summer I hiked up here late in the day with my friends Mike and Karl. This was a somewhat unusual season in the Yosemite Sierra, in that there had been a lot of snow during the winter season and it had continued right on into spring. Consequently, the high passes opened up later than usual, and on a very late June day when things would typically be a bit more summer-ish, it looked more like late winter up here when we arrived.

I’ve visited this place quite a few times, but had never seen quite this scene before. More typically, the snow and ice are completely gone by the time I manage to get up there, and a typical visit usually entails arriving late on a warm afternoon and then hanging out in the sun while waiting for the evening light to come on. This time we were in snow before we crossed the ridge before the lake, and we had to think a bit about just how to head down toward the lake since the usual path was covered in snow. The lake itself was (obviously, judging from the photo!) still covered in ice, though melting was underway and the surface was a jigsaw puzzle of alternating blue pools and white ice.

We found a location near clumps of trees on rocky talus slopes above the lake to do our photography. In this photograph I shot down the length of the lake to mostly fill the frame with the melting ice. Beyond a small rocky rise at the end of the lake, the terrain drops off towards the meadows of the Tuolumne region, and beyond rise the peaks of the Cathedral range in early evening light.

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