Tag Archives: golden

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Golden Desert-Snapdragon

July 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden Desert-Snapdragon plant emerges from rocky terrain, Death Valley National Park

This is another photograph from a Death Valley trip I made back in 2010, “rediscovered” while going through old raw files near the end of 2012. The photograph was made along the roadside near a popular, even iconic, Death Valley location early one morning, during a spring that followed a much wetter than usual winter. During my visit I managed to catch the beginning of the impressive blooming of wildflowers that almost invariably follows such weather, as the desert plants take full advantage of the moisture and do everything in their power to reproduce. During the course of my visit, which lasted less than a week, I watch bare hillsides transition into flower-covered hillsides, and it seemed that some new plant was growing in almost every place that a plant might grow.

This plant is, obviously, quite small. You might have overlooked it and some of the nearby plants if you did not slow down and look a bit more closely. I only noticed the new plants after stopping on the other side of the road and looking around a bit. Once I did so, I saw a lot of wildflower color in this otherwise barren and rock place. This is on the verge of being a “belly flower” – one so small and so close to the ground that you must get down on your belly to photograph it!

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Leaves, First Light

June 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light on aspen trees and fall foliage, eastern Sierra Nevada, California

This past fall I had exactly one day to photograph aspens in the eastern Sierra Nevada. This was a bit odd for me, since I usually spend quite a number of days chasing fall aspen color up and down the east side of the range. But this year my target was a bit further away in Utah, and we merely paused for an extra day on the “east side” on our way to that other state. Fortunately, we hit great conditions, in terms of good aspen color and fine weather that didn’t prevent us from getting up to those trees.

Very early in the morning we headed up to an area that I have photographed many times. There are a couple of iconic photographic subjects at this location, but I mostly got them out of my system some years ago and now I look for somewhat less obvious subjects when I go here. I began by shooting some trees near the outlet stream of a lake, with early morning light behind the trees. After working that tricky but beautiful light for a while, I decided to go around to the far side of the lake to where a large stand of small but densely packed aspens stands at the base of a hillside. I got there before the sun came to this spot, so I quickly schlepped my gear up the hill a ways and into the end of the grove, setting up just before the sun arrived. Before the sun’s rays hit the tree, everything had a distinctly blue tone. As the edge of the shadow arrived, the aspen leaves began to glow more and to cast shadows on the trees in the background. These shadows quickly transitioned from soft and subtle to quite contrasty and sharply defined in a matter of seconds. This photograph was made just as the sunlight arrived but before it became intense, and the soft shadows of the leaves on the slender background trunks lasted just a moment.

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

Six Ross’s Geese in Flight

June 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small flock of six Ross’s geese in flight against the sky in golden hour light, San Joaquin Valley, California

Late on this January afternoon – more like early evening perhaps – we were staking out a small flock of Ross’s geese that had parked themselves in a nearby pond. There were not that many of them – nothing like the flocks of many thousands that we have watched on some other evenings, when they gradually depart in small groups over a long period of time, or the very large group we saw earlier this year that mostly just moved around in a pasture near where we were shooting. Each time a small sub group departed on this evening, they created a noticeable decline in the number of birds left behind.

However, they somewhat compensated for their small numbers by means of their more “photographable” departure path, at least in some cases. Rather than flying away from us, some instead flew from left to right in front of our position and some of them even did a few laps overhead before actually leaving. This group of six was among those most obliging geese. They had departed to the right, looped back around to the left, and then flew across in front of us a second time, all the while taking a fairly low flight path. As this group passed by I watched carefully though the viewfinder to try to catch them in an instant when none of them obscured the others in the flock, and I caught such a moment here with the added bonus of a bit of slightly golden late afternoon light.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

San Francisco Skyline, Bridge Cables

June 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden Gate Bridge Cables silhouetted against hazy morning light on San Francisco Bay and city skyline

Back in March I took a day to go up into Marin County to do some early spring photography, thinking about the possibility of shooting in the redwood forest at Muir Woods – which was, in fact, where I ended up. I left well before dawn, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge right about the time the sun was coming up. Being a big fan of shooting in atmospheric haze of all sorts, the very thin layer of fog spreading across the entrance to the bay was enough to make me pull over and make a few photographs of the bay and the city.

This was an unusual sort of fog. We are more familiar with the banks of thick fog coming in off of the Pacific and flowing in through the Golden Gate, covering the bridge and rising over the shoulders or even the summits of the hills, often with a fairly sharp boundary between fog and clear air. This fog, however, was thin and more widespread and did not form the familiar “bank.” It was closer to translucent than to opaque, and the outline of the downtown San Francisco skyline was visible, though all details were muted. The identity of the foreground structure probably needs no explanation!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: golden

Golden Desert-Snapdragon

Aspen Leaves, First Light

San Francisco Skyline, Bridge Cables

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