Tag Archives: fog

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley

Long Valley Ranch Building

January 8, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This is the same ranch that is pictured in the photograph I posted yesterday, though this photograph was made two years earlier. The ranch is out on the less-traveled back roads of Long Valley, not far from the resort town of Mammoth Lakes. That said, there isn’t anything remotely resort-like about this place, which gives every appearance of being a working ranch with cattle and horses and run-down outbuildings.

I love this area in the fall when the temperatures drop and the steam from the geothermal sources of hot water can rise into the morning light. In the right conditions, small columns of mist rise all over the valley. This particular spot has a lot of water, most notably nearby Hot Creek, which is, uh, hot. As I do so often, here I chose to photograph almost directly into the morning sun, which creates and extremely bright and luminous quality in the mist and which places the shaded side of the building toward the camera in the lower part of the frame.

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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

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley

Ranch, Fence, Morning Mist

January 7, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning mist rises above Long Valley ranch land

This is a favorite photography area for me. It isn’t far from the crowded eastern Sierra ski and resort town of Mammoth Lakes by the map, but it every other way it is pretty much a completely different world. In the fall, when conditions are right and mists rise out in these flatlands, I like to leave the Sierra behind and drive out here and explore.

The Long Valley area is the caldera of an ancient volcano, which erupted quite violently many hundreds of thousands of years ago, and which has been active at times since then. Today the visual evidence remains in the form of the large caldera itself (which becomes quite obvious after you look for it) and the many hot springs and even a hot creek out in the valley. On cold mornings fogs form out here, and mist and steam rise from the many sources of hot water. This was one of those foggy mornings, and looking over this ranch and directly into the sun, I saw a beautiful series of receding layers: foreground pasture and several steaming waterways, a fence, more fog beyond, more mist, and then a series of higher and higher hills and mountains.

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

Geese, Tree, Dusk

January 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese fly low past a tree at dusk, San Joaquin Valley

A small group of photographer friends spent (for the third year in a row) New Year’s Day in California’s San Joaquin Valley, greeting the dawn of 2015 by photographing it! Dawn wasn’t the only attraction — we are also drawn here by the landscape, the incredible wildlife (geese, cranes, egrets, herons, ibises, pelicans, and much more), and the beautiful winter light in this part of California. We began our day in the pre-dawn soft and foggy light and ended it in post-dust light when it finally became to dark to photograph.

For me this simple photograph of a field, a tree, and some geese evokes many of the things that draw me back to this landscape every winter. Even on a day when the tule fog thins, the atmosphere rarely seems to fully clear, and the dusk light is soft and mysterious and full of colors. And at this hour the geese seem to be settling in for the evening, often collecting in large groups in fields of ponds. As they do, they often seem to fly low between groups, flowing across the still landscape and between trees like the wind itself or like the flow of water.

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

Four Sandhill Cranes

January 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Four sandhill cranes take flight above a dormant San Joaquin Valley field

At some point every fall my attention turns to (along with a few other seasonal things) the arrival of migratory birds in California’s Great Central Valley. In earlier times this was a landscape full of seasonal pools and marshlands, and it reportedly supported uncountable numbers of birds. Much of the wetland terrain has now been taken for farming and other purposes, but some has been preserved and the birds still come. By the time late fall and early winter roll around again, an impressive number of birds arrive: geese, sandhill cranes, swans, and more. I lived in California since I was a small child and I never knew about this, even though much of the action takes place within a day’s drive of where I grew up. Even today, it seems that few Californians are aware of the rich annual spectacle that takes place so close to them.

I made my first bird photography foray of the season a few weeks before this visit, but by this late December visit a lot more birds had shown up — including the geese who seemed strangely absent earlier. (The three years of very serious drought in California are doubtlessly part of the explanation.) There were a lot of sandhill cranes. I’m not sure if the numbers have increased, of it they just happened to be in places where I could find them more easily, but I sure saw a lot of them. When photographing these birds we always take steps to make ourselves less visible and threatening to the birds — we often photograph from inside our vehicles, and when we can and do get out to photograph we try to avoid disturbing the birds. However, this group was a surprise, showing up very close to us as we crept past slowing in a vehicle and taking to the air almost immediately. Fortunately I had my camera handy and I was able to stop immediately and track their flight as they took off and circled us.

(This photograph appeared here previously in a an article about a new lens that I used to make the photograph.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: fog

Long Valley Ranch Building

Ranch, Fence, Morning Mist

Geese, Tree, Dusk

Four Sandhill Cranes

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