Tag Archives: grass

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Wetlands Evening

January 26, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees, plants, and a few birds under a bank of clouds above wetlands

The process of bird-photography, at least as I know it, is perhaps not quite what people who don’t photograph this subject might imagine. The actual practice and experience varies from photographer to photographer and, no doubt, from place to place. However, I’d be willing to bet that many people would be surprised at how much not-photographing goes on! There are amazing moments when we come upon a special scene, when a huge flock of geese lifts off, when we get close to a raptor, when the light and sky do something astonishing. Then there are all the other moments, and they form the majority of the experience. The birds are somewhere else. They are just a bit too far away. The light goes flat. It rains. And so on.

The fact of the matter is that in order to photograph those periodic extraordinary moments, you have to spend a lot of time just being there. If really special stuff happens, say 1% of the time, you’ll increase your odds of experiencing it if your base is 100 hours rather and one. Of course, that also means that you’ll increase the number of slow hours when not much happens. Be ready. Bring a book. Take a nap. Wander a bit. And sometimes take a look at other subjects, like the still and quiet grasses growing in a shallow pond beneath winter skies, even though there aren’t a whole lot of birds there.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Marsh

January 2, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Skeletal trees and dormant grasses in a winter marsh

We celebrated New Year’s Day as we have for the past few years — meeting before dawn a group of friends and photographers out in the wintry California Central Valley to greet the literal dawn of the new year. We arrived before sunrise, spent the first few hours making photographs, then gathered for a morning champagne toast and shared snacks and stories. After lunch we went back into the field to photograph birds and the landscape until it was so dark that we could barely see one another by the light of the rising full moon. Great times!

While most of my photography on such trips and in such places at this time of year involves birds, occasionally I photograph other things in this valley. During the late morning hours we all felt that need for a walking break. (Most bird photography involves a lot of standing and sitting around.) We wandered out on a trail through a marsh, I got started a bit later than the group. I took only a small, handheld camera with a single lens, not thinking there would be much to photograph. But it was quiet, a gentle breeze moved the grasses, and soft light shone through the hazy atmosphere, so I stopped to make a few photographs of this peaceful and almost silent landscape of trees, grasses, and water.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Meadow, Stream, Evening

November 16, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A stream meanders through a subalpine meadow on its way to a lake, John Muir Wilderness

This photograph is the final one (for now, at least) in a series that takes me back to late summer, high in the eastern Sierra Nevada, base-camped for over a week with friends and extensively photographing the surrounding area. A group of us does this almost every summer, so a good thing is made even better through the combination of time devoted to beautiful photographic subjects, time spent in these stunning places, and time spent with good friends. We say we are there to photograph – and we certainly are! — but the truth is that we also spend a lot of time hanging out, talking, and just being.

I made the photograph on the last evening before our planned departure the next day to return to what passes for the real world. The location is a meadow right below our campsite, which was hidden in trees up on the hill of an old moraine. Strangely, even though we were camped right next to this wonderful spot I had not really focused my attention on photographing it, often instead wandering off to more distant subjects. On the final days of the trip it occurred to me that I should finally spend some time in this spot right in the neighborhood! So, late in the day on the final evening of the trip, off I went to walk slowly along the edge of “our” lake, crossing small inlet streams and traversing the surrounding meadows.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Reflections, Early Morning

September 23, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A distant ridge in very early morning light is reflected on the surface of an alpine tarn

A photograph is a curious thing. It can “tell” you things about a subject — and about the person who made the photograph — that might not be easily communicated in other ways. On the other hand, a photograph usually leaves it to the viewer to guess at many aspects of the image’s context — and the viewer either brings her/his own context or may simply be unaware. For example, I probably see this scene very differently from others who view the photograph, even those who were there or who know the place. Let me explain.

What is not “visible” in this photograph? It was made near the end of a long stay in this area, where we were camped in forest a few hundred feet lower near a lake. So by this time I knew the spot quite well, and rather than “discovering” it I was essentially revisiting and looking more closely at things I already had seen. I had crawled out of my tent before sunrise, resisting the temptation to stay in the warm sleeping bag “for just a few more minutes,” and instead unzipping the bag, pulling on a down jacket and boots, heading outside and shouldering my gear. It was still not light when I arrived here, and a made a few “warm up” photographs as I wandered around this pond in the damp meadow. To make the photograph I was standing almost as much in the lake as I was next to it. At the time of this photograph the first, warm dawn light had come and gone, though the alignment of the peaks meant that not much direct light fell on the scene. Having visiting this spot for a week now, I was also noticing that the grass on the rise across the small pond was now visibly transitioning from summer green to autumn brown. As I worked a breeze came up, ruffling the surface of the water — and this photograph was made during a brief interval when it quieted enough to reflect the distant peaks. And speaking of those peaks, as I stood here and looked at them I was also aware that in about 48 hours I would be leaving, crossing a 12,000′ pass that is visible at the low point on that ridge. The trip was coming to an end.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: grass

Winter Marsh

Meadow, Stream, Evening

Reflections, Early Morning

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