Tag Archives: faint

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Tree, Wetlands, Morning Fog

Leave a comment
Tree, Wetlands, Morning Fog
Thin dawn fog floats around the base of a solitary autumn tree in San Joaquin Valley wetlands

Merry Christmas 2015!

Tree, Wetlands, Morning Fog. San Joaquin Valley, California. December 17, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Thin dawn fog floats around the base of a solitary autumn tree in San Joaquin Valley wetlands

This landscape is ostensibly about the migratory birds at this time of year, from late fall through the winter months. These ponds, which are just fields during the hot Central Valley summer, typically fill with shallow water and become the winter home for uncounted numbers of geese, sandhill cranes, ibises, and more. It was, in fact, the birds that first brought me out here in the winter, and they still call me back every year.

But there is much more to this landscape than photographs of birds. In fact, my strongest sensory associations with the place are not about the visual appearance of the wildlife for the most part, but are instead about a host of other things. And this simple photograph, for me at least, evokes the sensory recall of those other elements. To a person who may not have been here at this time of year, many things familiar to me cannot be contained in the photograph. The sound of the birds, continuous and often raucous, is central — and it is the thing that most immediately gets my attention when I visit. The fog is a big part of the experience — not just its ability to mute the details of the landscape, but also the sensations of cold and damp and what it does to the quality of light, especially at dawn. In addition, this is one of those California places allow me to extend the color season for three months or more. It begins in September in highest reaches of the Sierra, works its way down (as aspens change) to the high desert (with cottonwoods), then the Sierra foothills, then to the coastal hills, and finally to the lowlands where, as in this photograph, “fall” color remains until nearly the new year.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Austria, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Window Shadows and Reflections

Leave a comment
Window Shadows and Reflections
Window Shadows and Reflections

Window Shadows and Reflections. Salzburg, Austria. July 17, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The shadows and faint reflections of a window create patterns on a wall in Salzburg, Austria

Although we did not actually stay in Salzburg during out July 2013 travels, we managed to end up there on four of our 7 days in Bavaria. Our trail from Heidelberg arrived in Salzburg and our return train departed here. On a couple of other days we were traveling around the area to visit various features not far from Salzburg, so we ended up there for a few hours – on two occasions having a late lunch, taking part in Salzburg’s “coffee culture,” and then wandering around. We did see some of the main tourist places, such as the square near the Salzburg Cathedral, the castle, and the narrow and bustling (and a bit uncomfortably commercial) streets of the old downtown, but we also managed to walk through a few less busy areas.

Some of these walks took us through some very narrow and old streets between the main part of old Salzburg and the outlying area where we parked. Here the buildings sit right up against the streets, and the streets themselves were obviously constructed in a pre-automobile era since they are barely a single car wide. Many things intrigued me about these narrow streets beside their mere narrowness: the various muted colors of the buildings, the ways the streets twist and turn and come together at odd angles, the interesting way that the light played on the scene as it came down from far above or shone down street that aligned with the sun, and some of the architectural features such as the windows and the interesting metal street lights that seemed to be everywhere. In this photograph the sun was rather high in the sky but almost in line with the street, and the image of the shadows of the open windows almost mirrors the fainter pattern of the reflections from the glass.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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 | Facebook | Google+ | 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.

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

Geese and Sun in Fog

Leave a comment
Geese and Sun in Fog
Geese and Sun in Fog

Geese and Sun in Fog. Central Valley, California. December 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small flock of Ross’s geese passes by the sun as it barely shines through dense Central Valley tule fog

Although photographing birds and the landscapes where they are found on a dense fog day might seem like a challenge or perhaps even a disappointment, for me it turns out that the fog makes things much more interesting. While I love seeing and photographing the migratory birds as the warm dawn light hits them, that is usually over fairly quickly. But with fog there are all kinds of interesting mysteries to explore. Birds appear on the edge of visibility, and often you may hear them but not see them. (This was especially true with sandhill cranes on this day. We often heard them, but never caught more than a faint and momentary visual sighting as they briefly emerged partially from the fog as they flew directly overhead.) The atmosphere can glow as the sun tries to push through the shallow tule fog.

At one point during this foggy morning a breeze came up and for a moment it looked like the fog might clear. It became a bit less opaque near the ground and there were occasional hints of potential light as the fog momentarily thinned. The disk of the sun became faintly visible, though it often quickly faded again from sight. When I first saw the sun I thought that since birds were flying overhead from time to time that if I was patient I just might be able to get a photograph of some of them in the fog with the faint sun behind them. You can only “plan” a photograph like this in the most general sense: the amount of fog, its thickening and thinning, and the appearance and formation of the birds are entirely out of the photographer’s control. So I wait and watch… and make a number of photographs.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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 | Facebook | Google+ | 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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Tree and Pond, Fog

7 Comments
Tree and Pond, Fog
Tree and Pond, Fog

Tree and Pond, Fog. Cosumnes River Wildlife Preserve, California. January 23, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary tree and a winter pond on a very foggy Central Valley morning, Cosumnes River Wildlife Preserve.

On my first visit to this wildlife preserve in California’s Central Valley (located between Stockton and Sacramento) I was thinking that I might have a chance to photograph wildlife, namely that incredible number of migrating birds that spend their winters in the rich, wet areas of this part of California. I knew it would be foggy, but I like that. (If you have followed my blog for even a short time you have perhaps seen some of my “barely there” photographs in which most details are nearly entirely obscured by clouds, rain, mist, or fog. )

I was not disappointed by a lack of fog! When I arrived it was so thick that I couldn’t see more than perhaps 100 or 200 feet! The Central Valley fog us tule fog which rises from the wet ground rather than blowing in from somewhere else. (The latter is the type of fog in, say, San Francisco, where it often blows in off the ocean.) Since tule fog starts at ground level, it often is not that thick. On a number of occasions I’ve been driving (slowly!) though terribly thick tule fog in the Central Valley, so thick that it seemed risky to drive at even 25 mph, only to look up and see stars in the sky overhead! On my way past Tracy on this morning, as I entered the fog I noted that it was perhaps only 30-50 feet deep. Because of this, the fog has a special quality that is not found as often in the ocean fog that is more common in the San Francisco Bay Area. The tule fog seems often to me to have a luminous quality that I attribute to the light that comes down from above even in the thickest fog.

That was somewhat the case here. I walked into the slough area across the road from the visitor center at the Preserve, and into an area that is mostly open fields in the summer, but mostly a giant pond in the winter. Everywhere around me I could hear the hundreds or thousands of waterfowl – ducks, geese, and who knows what else, and I later saw egrets and sandhill cranes – but I could see almost nothing. Eventually I could just barely make out his small tree standing on a shallow area where some grasses grew. I wondered if the photograph would have enough contrast to even be usable, but in the end there was just enough detail. (It is hard to see in the small jpg, but it is certainly there in the 12 x 18 test print I made.) At first I thought it would end up being a monochrome photograph, and I spent a lot of time taking it through my workflow with that in mind. But something just wasn’t quite working for me, so I decided to reconsider and try a color rendition. In the print, I think that this ends up looking better in color in several ways. First, the soft blue cast that I thought I’d want to avoid, more strongly evokes for me the feeling of actually being there, especially through that luminous quality of the tule fog light that I mentioned earlier. In addition, I think that some of the very subtle color variations turn out to be important.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | 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.