Tag Archives: grass

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Fog and Reeds

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Fog and Reeds
Dense winter tule fog, tule islands, and a wetland pond.

Fog and Reeds. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense winter tule fog, tule islands, and a wetland pond.

From time to time I like to do visual experiments, seeing how minimal the content of the image can be and still work. Sometimes these photograph balance on an edge between portrayal of the real and pure color and form. I feel that images like this can portray or evoke the mood of a subject, even if they don’t include much detail at all. The idea is to suggest more than to tell.

The winter tule fogs of California’s Central Valley often do a fine job of minimizing landscape details. (They also do a fine job of minimizing the details of the roads I drive to get there, but I digress…) These shallow fog layers settle in during the winter and can be some of the thickest fogs you’ll ever encounter. Oddly, because they are so shallow, sometimes your vision straight upwards is barely impeded at all — and as I made this photograph the nearly-full moon was clearly visible overhead. But the view out into the landscape was radically limited, hardly extending more than a few tens of feet and muting details of closer subjects.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Trees, Fog

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Winter Trees, Fog
Tule fog surrounds a stand of. barren winter trees, Central Valley.

Winter Trees, Fog. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tule fog surrounds a stand of. barren winter trees, Central Valley.

Something tells me that California Central Valley residents might disagree with me when I say that the winter tule fogs are among the biggest attractions of the region. I understand that days (or weeks!) of the gray can be depressing, and I’ve heard the stories about traffic accidents in zero-visibility fog. It is wet. It s cold. You can’t see through it. It interferes with travel.

But I love the mystery that the tule fog brings to this area. On clear summer days this is a broad, flat landscape that is largely agricultural. That has the potential to give it a bucolic quality, but the nature of modern Central Valley agriculture is that it also borders on an industrial process. But when the fog rises the world shrinks down to a radius that might be measured in yards rather than miles, more distant distractions disappear, details are muted, and the shallow but thick layer of fog glows luminously on a winter morning.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Cranes in Motion

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A flock of sandhill cranes taking flight above wetlands on a Central Valley autumn morning.

Cranes in Motion. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of sandhill cranes taking flight above wetlands on a Central Valley autumn morning.

This photograph follows one that I shared a few days ago. In that photo a group of sandhill cranes was standing in and along the edge of a pond, and I mentioned that their upright positions suggested that they were preparing to take to the air and depart. I wrote that without looking at the files that followed. Now I have looked at those other files, and I realize that I was correct — the small flock rose into the air almost immediately after that photograph and then traversed across the scene from left to right. I made this photograph as they departed.

You may notice that there is a lot of motion blur in this photograph. We often try to capture sharp photographs of birds, including those in flight, by hoping for sufficient light and then learning to track them as they fly. That’s not always an easy thing to do, and there’s nothing wrong with a sharp photograph of birds! But sometimes I feel that including some blur may better express the motion of this subject and the speed and suddenness of the birds’ flight.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Cranes, Pond, Autumn Morning

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Cranes, Pond, Autumn Morning
A small flock of sandhill cranes stands in a wetland pond in early morning autumn light.

Cranes, Pond, Autumn Morning. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small flock of sandhill cranes stands in a wetland pond in early morning autumn light.

I am a big fan of these flat landscapes of trees and grasses and ponds and birds, especially between the last month or so of autumn and the end of winter. All up and down California (and in many other places, too) migratory and native birds are everywhere, and while it might seem that there isn’t much happening here from the human perspective, the action is almost continuous in the lives of birds. The first thing I do when I arrive in such places before dawn is open the car window or door and listen — the sound may be that of a few far-off birds or it might be the raucous chorus of thousands of them nearby and overhead, but the striking sound of the cranes is almost always somewhere in the mix.

I began photographing before dawn on this morning as I usually do. I slowly worked my way along a levee, pausing to watch for and then photograph birds in the low light. The first big group I spotted was a large flock of snow geese, but they were not in a great spot for photography, so I kept moving. Soon I came upon a huge flock of hundreds of cranes in and around a pond. At first they were mostly standing still in the shallow water, but gradually they began to become restless and then, group by group, take to the air and fly away. I don’t recall now for sure, but judging by their attentive postures, there’s a good chance that this group left shortly after I made the photograph.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.