Tag Archives: fly

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Flock

August 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A high key rendering of a photograph of a flock of pelicans above the Point Lobos State Reserve.

I photograph birds sometimes – more these days than at some times in the past – but they are generally not my main passion in photography, with a few exceptions. The first of those, however, is photographing pelicans along the Pacific Ocean coast of California where these big, magnificent birds seem to stand apart from the other birds of the area. They are bigger, they often coast rather than flapping wings quickly, when seen they are most often simply passing by on their way to and from some unknown other place, and they overall seem to me to have an almost prehistoric aspect.

Most often when I photograph them I go to some place where I think they will pass and I wait. Places where a rocky peninsula extends a bit into the ocean can be likely spots, as are the top edges of certain bluffs above cliffs, where they seem to float past on updrafts from onshore winds. Often as I wait and watch for them I see other birds and I may photograph them, but I’m always watching in the further distance for the groups of pelicans, usually strung out in lines of a few birds to, sometimes, many – and as soon as I spot them the other birds are forgotten as I watch the pelicans approach. I understand that this year the California pelicans are stressed by some sort of environmental change and many have died and others seem undernourished. This may partly explain why I saw so few on this July visit to Point Lobos, mostly only stray groups of two or three that were separated widely from one another. But late in the day a huge flock came from the south and, surprisingly, rather than floating past quickly they moved slightly inland, where I think they found a thermal, and spent several minutes coasting in circles as they rose higher.

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Ross’s Geese Take Flight, Dusk

March 3, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of Ross’s geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.

Yes, another photograph of geese taking flight above a California Central Valley pond. I can’t help myself! :-) After photographing the dwindling flock, as they left in large groups during the hour before sunset, at the point of most beautiful light there were only a few left. This group was among the very last to depart from this pond, and at this point it was dusk and the colors had gone from the crisp blues of an hour earlier to warm pinks and reds and purples. We were lucky enough to be very close to this large flock for at least an hour.

I’ll use this photograph to make another technical observation. I made what might seem like an odd choice regarding exposure for this shot. Here I wanted to try to stop the motion of the birds as they lifted off. (In other photographs of this subject I intentionally allow the motion to blur.) This meant that I needed a relatively short shutter speed. Even after raising the ISO to 400 and opening up the largest aperture on this long lens, the result was still going to be underexposure. for what I had in mind for this sequence of shots, I wanted to avoid using an ultra-high ISO with the attendant increase in noise. So I chose to deliberately underexpose these shots by perhaps a couple of stops, trusting that I’d be able to compensate for this in post since I shoot in raw mode. In other words, if you are the sort who scans EXIF data for exposure information and then tries to make sense out of it or even use it yourself… you have been warned! :-)

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

Trees, Pond, and Birds in Twilight Sky

February 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Migratory birds fly through twilight skies above trees and ponds at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

On an early February Saturday evening, four of us converged on the Merced National Wildlife Refuge from far-flung locations – two from the San Francisco Bay Area and two from the Sierra Foothills – to photograph the evening fly-in of migratory birds. We arrived well before the golden light of evening and had plenty of time to get settled in and find birds and other things to photograph. The first “target” was a large, no make that huge, flock of geese that were in a pond of the far side of the road around the refuge. We photographed these birds, both in the water and as groups of them took off and flow (sometimes) over our position.

As the evening wore on the bird “action” began to slow down. Some of us wandered off to shoot other subject including the interesting trees and brush along the levees that separate the ponds. I can’t speak for the others, but I had decided that “the show was over,” and that we had probably seen as many of the large migratory birds as we would see that night. You can’t completely predict where and when they’ll show, so one has to be a bit philosophical about this. Then, without warning, we began to hear the calls of large numbers of birds from the south and moments later flock after flock began to fly right over us and then circle above the pond in front of us in huge groups. There was a bit of light still, and I managed a few photographs in this beautiful but marginal light before we pretty much stopped photographing and simply marveled at the spectacle.

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

Ross’s Geese, Winter Sky

February 18, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of Ross’s geese in flight against a winter sky above California’s Central Valley.

I may have mentioned before that I’m not the world best namer of things – I struggle with identification of both flora and fauna, at least beyond the most obvious stuff. This is somewhat odd, since I often recall and recognize in great detail the specific characteristics of things. For example, while I’ve never been able to consistently remember the names of certain wildflowers, I’m very familiar with them and can tell you exactly where to find the plants, when they bloom, and so forth. This is all my preamble to saying that I’m pretty sure these are Ross’s Geese, but that I make no guarantees! From a bit of reading and viewing I did before posting, I found out that telling the Ross’s Goose apart from the Snow Goose is not an easy thing. Some of the differences are more of degree than anything else – one is a bit larger and has a bit larger wingspan. Others are subtle, for example the head shapes. Some or more obvious, such as the presence or not of a certain pattern on the side of the bill. (I now know that some other birds that I had not identified earlier on must be Snow Geese… since I now recall seeing that very pattern and wondering about it.)

Anyway… when we visited the Merced National Wildlife Refuge on an early February evening we got lucky and found a huge mass of these birds (and others) in a location that was fairly close to the places from which viewing was possible. To give you an idea of how many birds there were, when we first arrived we noticed groups of a few hundred lifting off and flying away and began to worry that we might miss the show – but it turned out that a few hundred departures, repeated many times over, did not diminish the apparent size of the monumental group of birds at all!

For me, and I suspect for most who photograph these birds, the “hit rate” is something considerably short of 100%. If I have to wait long enough for birds to fly over, eventually I get impatient and start shooting groups that are really too far away to make good photos. Others look like they are heading my direction, so I compose and start shooting, only to watch them veer off to the side. Others approach close enough but they end up against bright sky and little or no detail is visible in the shot. Others come close but assume odd positions that don’t make impressive photographs, or they may even come too close to photograph! But eventually, something good happens. This group came close, flew towards me, and within shooting distance not only turned to present great profiles but even lined up in such a way that the low sun caught their undersides and filled in what might have been silhouettes otherwise.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: fly

Trees, Pond, and Birds in Twilight Sky

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