Tag Archives: flowers

Photographs: Agriculture, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Blossoms, Almond Orchard

Image March 29, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Almond trees blooming in California’s Central Valley.

On this early March morning I was out in Central California photographing the last of the season’s geese and a few of their feathered colleagues. Because of the recent heavy rains there were pools of water everywhere. This provided the birds with more than the usual number of ponds, and many of them chose to land it places inaccessible to me. Eventually I decided to look around for other things to photograph.

As I headed up a nearby road I noticed that the vast orchards were blooming. It is quite a sight, and I understand that these regions are now starting to promote the almond blossom season as an event. The location I visited was fairly remote, and the road I took to this orchard was not one that many city folks would want to drive! I pulled over next to an orchard and photographed the backlit blooms.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature

Alcove With Flowers

Image March 25, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This was a rather serendipitous photograph. We had been photographing in this large garden for an hour or two. The sun was getting higher in the sky, making the light less appealing for photographing foliage, and we decided it was time to move on. We were on our way toward the exit of the garden when I passed through a gate in a brick wall and just happen to look back… and see this little scene built into the wall.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Blue Hyacinth

Image March 18, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

While I like photographing flowers, I’m no expert on the plant world or flowers. In fact, I have a heck of a time keeping their names straight! It has always been this way. It has always been the case that I could recognize the appearance of a wildflower, down to the specific spot where I might find it, the week when it would typically bloom, and what else might grow nearby… yet be unable to recall its name. These hyacinth flowers intrigue me… but I didn’t know what they were called!

I did, however, recognize that they are not easy to photograph. Their shape creates challenges regarding depth of field, especially when I try to photograph individual blossoms. If finally occurred to me that, rather than trying to photograph separate flowers, I could photograph from a position directly a above the plant and capture the remarkable patterns produced by the mass of flowers radiating out from the central stem.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New England

Autumn Evening, Near Franconia

Image November 7, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light comes to a broad valley near Franconia, New Hampshire.

This photograph resulted from more than a little serendipity. Earlier we had gone to photograph a nearby area that was on our list of places to see. That led to a detour up a few side roads, all of which took a bit more time than we anticipated. We finished there and moved on, but it was clear that evening was coming soon, and it made sense to find a nearby area to photograph rather than racing to a more distant location.

At about that time we spotted another side road with a sign suggesting a trailhead and a view — so we took it and ended up at a parking lot at the end of the short road. The colors in the area were spectacular, but the light wasn’t yet quite what we had in mind, so we wandered down the trail a bit. Soon I spotted the little bed of white flowers in the dry meadow, and as I thought about how to photograph it I wondered if I could include it and a view of the broad valley beyond. It turned out that there was one camera position that would work, and this is the result, a photograph made just as the light was beginning to suggest evening.