Tag Archives: geese

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

Blue Geese, Red Sky

December 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Ross’s geese, blue in the fading light of the overhead evening sky, fly against the reds of a wild Central Valley sunset

Back in early December, 2012 we were out photographing migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, on a day that began with extremely thick tule fog, gradually transitioned to hazy sunshine, then was interrupted by the atmospheric muck of an incoming weather system, and ended with a surprising and astonishing sunset and post-sunset display of color. It seems that there must have been a gap between the clouds and the horizon somewhere far to our west, and as the sun dropped to the horizon the late and very red light shone up into the clouds, turning them blood-red (and, at times, pink and purple and orange and more.)

Right before this we had been parked near a very large flock of geese that were mostly grounded, but which would occasionally take off en masse and circle for a bit before settling back in, often quite close to where they started. I had been tracking and photographing them in the somewhat gloomy light, and when the brilliantly colorful sky arrived I was ready to try to take advantage of it. This created a challenge though, that is probably familiar to anyone who has photographed such a sky. It is very bright and (important to those shooting digital systems) very red – which means that it can be necessary to underexpose a bit to avoid seeing very strange things happen to the red channel in the image file. In addition, since I was shooting straight into this brilliant light here, the geese were backlit. So, in post I was faced with a couple of contradictory issues – I had to control the brightness of the sky while trying to regain a bit of detail on the bodies of the backlit and rather dark birds! About the “blue geese, red sky” title… Because the dimmer light falling on the portions of the geese facing me was largely diffused light from a non-colorful (e.g. – blue) part of the sky, their white feathers registered very much as blue.

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, Tree and Marsh

December 20, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A thick flock of Ross’s geese flies above a marsh and a solitary tree in California’s Central Valley

After a full morning (and then some!) of photographing mostly Ross’s geese at a Central Valley wildlife refuge, we took a short break for a mid-afternoon lunch and then hurried back to the refuge by about 3:30 for evening photography. One of the last things we did before taking this break was to briefly assemble at the main overlook near the entrance to the refuge, where we were a bit surprised to see lots of geese settling in on one of the nearby ponds, and from which we could look back and see still more geese at the edges of the pasture where we had been photographing them.

As is often the case on a tule fog day like this one in the Central Valley, while the fog did “clear,” the general haziness never did completely go away. Instead the atmosphere remained mildly opaque, and it glowed in the late afternoon sunlight. Looking west, it was almost hard to see into this glow, but that is the direction we looked to see the pond and beyond it some isolated trees and the wetlands disappearing into the distance. Behind us, back on that pasture, the flock suddenly lifted off all at once and the birds made a large loop or two around us. I could see that they were likely to pass by the far edge of this pond and by the silhouetted tree, so I did a “landscape on the fly,” shooting handheld with a 100-400mm zoom as the birds came into the composition that I quickly found.

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

Geese and Sun in Fog

December 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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

Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog

December 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Six Ross’s geese fly above the flock on a foggy Central Valley morning

My EXIF data tells me that I must have made this photograph close to noon. In many cases, landscape and nature photographers, this one included, might well be off taking a nap (necessary after a 4:00 a.m. wake up alarm) or looking for lunch, but not on this day. There had been very thick fog when we assembled near the entrance to this Central Valley wildlife shortly after 6:00 a.m., and it showed little sign of clearing as we made our first circumnavigation of the place, looking for the birds that we could hear off somewhere in the gloom but which were quite difficult to actually see, much less photograph! By the time we worked our way around to the far end of the drive around the refuge, the fog began to thin just a bit – though the sun was still obscured – and we found our first big group of Ross’s geese, feeding and squawking wildly.

At first they mostly remained on the ground, walking en masse across the pasture land in which they had landed. Eventually we saw more of them airborne, flying in from or off to some distant place, or sometimes just moving to a different area of the pasture. Before too long, we saw the first explosive group lift-off with its shock of noise and motion as thousands of the birds lift off almost simultaneously and fill the air, sometimes so thickly that you literally cannot see through the flock at times. From then on, there was more or less steady activity of one sort or another and we had lots of opportunity to track flying birds. This group was making a turn over the flock in front of me, preparing to make their landing in the fog.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: geese

Blue Geese, Red Sky

Like this:

Ross’s Geese, Tree and Marsh

Like this:

Geese and Sun in Fog

Like this:

Ross’s Geese in Flight, Fog

Like this:

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

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

Share this page:

Like this:

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