Tag Archives: grass

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Spring, Oaks, El Capitan Meadow

July 25, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Green grass and new oak leaves, El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley

Probably almost anyone who has photographed in Yosemite Valley much can recognize this sort of scene and perhaps even think of some favorite spots to find black oak trees with new spring growth, set in meadows and backed by forest. Even though this is a very dry year in The Valley – and in almost all of California – around the beginning of May the annual “greening” of the Valley did take place, and this photograph was made during that period.

When lit from behind and above, the light coming through the new oak leaves is luminous and the colors can take on an intensity that sometimes cause me to describe this as the “impossibly green season” in California. Perhaps it is because the state is brown, tan, or gray during so much of the year that the spring green seems so intense.

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

Egret Quartet

July 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A quartet of egrets on a foggy morning in a green late-winter pasture in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

This gang of egrets was politely waiting for me near the far corner of a wildlife refuge that I had visited on the last-winter morning, hoping to photograph (mostly) geese and cranes. The geese and cranes were a bit shy, and as I worked my way around the refuge’s perimeter road I wasn’t finding a lot of opportunities to photograph them. I could hear them, especially the sandhill cranes, but they seemed to be too far off, hidden by fog, or behind the tules. But I wasn’t in a hurry, so I took my time, stopping and watching and listening. By this later point in the season the initial astonishment at the huge numbers of birds had worn off a bit, and rather than jumping out of the car to photograph huge flocks of birds, as if they were the first and only flocks in the world, had given way to a bit more patience.

It had appeared that it would be a clear morning as I drove toward this location, but just moments before I arrived – a bit before dawn – the cool and damp air did begin to form some fog. This was fine with me, as I’d rather have a bit of interesting foggy atmosphere than have perfectly clear sky. But the fog was relatively short-lived – not like the midwinter fogs that can cover these places for days on end. By the time I finally worked my way over to this spot the sun was starting to break through and the fog was thinning. Because of their stark white color, lone egrets are often easy to spot from a good distance, and four of them clustered together were impossible to overlook. As I edged up closer to them, remaining in my vehicle so as not to spook them, they simply stood there, occasionally swinging their heads one way or another. Before I could make this photograph I first had to wait for an unruly band of red-winged blackbirds to depart, and then I waited for the four birds to move their heads in what seemed to me to be interesting directions.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwoods, Meadow, and Stumps

July 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Stumps of dead brush in a meadow with autumn cotton wood trees, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

We encountered these first autumn-foliage cottonwoods shortly after we entered this canyon, and this being our first day shooting in this area, I think we (or at least I) felt obligated to shoot every possible subject, since everything was so new on this day. Later I might have passed up these cottonwoods which, despite their brilliant color, were it a tricky spot to photograph and were just about to end up in the direct morning sunlight.

Trying to find some sort of composition that could include them but not make them the whole story, I first saw the brushy meadow with its light green grasses and older dry grass, but that was too featureless of a foreground for what I had in mind. Then I saw these old dead stumps of perhaps tamarisk or some other desert plant that were still standing in a section of this meadowy area, and I decide to use them to fill the foreground.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Bench, Ball, and Shadows

June 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A weathered red bench next to a suburban lawn and in front of a home with tree shadows

This probably seems like a different sort of photograph from me, but I actually have a thread of images along these lines that goes back quite a ways. They belong to what I think of as “wandering about my neighborhood” photographs, which I make on occasional walks in an extended version of my neighborhood – literally stepping out the front door and then walking. These walks encourage me to see things that I would otherwise miss, both in the general photographic sense of noticing things more when I have a camera in hand and in the more specific sense of noticing things that I otherwise simply pass by in my neighborhood.

I distinctly recall one of the first times I did this. I “saw” two things that I simply had never noticed before, even though I’ve lived in this neighborhood for years. First, in a nearby small downtown area there are buildings with more than one level – and it wasn’t until that first walk that I actually noticed the details of the second stories of these buildings. The second thing I noticed were shadows of trees. It turns out – no surprise now that I think about it – that they are everywhere. It was as if every building had trunks and branches and foliage painted on its walls. This photograph includes these shadows. It also has some other compositional elements that interest me – I’ll leave it to viewers to think about them – and there is something interesting to me about that old, weathered bench and the ball parked next to the column on the patio at the top of the concrete stairs.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: grass

Spring, Oaks, El Capitan Meadow

Egret Quartet

Cottonwoods, Meadow, and Stumps

Red Bench, Ball, and Shadows

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