Tag Archives: group

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

Box Elder Thicket, Fall

January 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense thicket of box elder trees along the Escalante River, Utah

Down in the canyons around the Escalante River the terrain varies a great deal. In some areas you might be walking more or less in the stream, perhaps wading up the center of the stream, crossing back and forth across it, rock hopping, and occasionally slogging through very wet sand and mud. In other areas, you might walk through groves of cottonwood or box elder trees of various sizes. Elsewhere you might leave the stream itself and find your way though brush or over and around rocks or slick rock. Sometimes there is abundant vegetation, and in other places you are in a world composed almost entirely of rock.

The river almost continuously twists back and forth and wind around one horseshoe bend after another. These bends seem to me to be important places of transition. On one side you might walk in direct sunlight and be warm. As you pass through the apex of the bend, if you were in the sun you are now likely to pass into shade and the canyon may narrow, perhaps forcing you to cross back and forth across the stream. I found this small clump of box elder trees in such a place. They were quite small – I imagine as a result of growing in an area that could be flooded from time to time – and they grew together densely. It is a challenge to try to make some sort of coherent composition out of such dense and intertwined growth. The interesting side light, reflected from another canyon wall, gave a bit of relief to the thin trunks of the trees, and there are a multitude of relationships to be found among their forms – they are mirror images of one another, or they twist almost in parallel – and in the background is such dense detail that even a very close look at a print shows that there is hardly a place where subjects beyond the trees are visible.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees Detail, Autumn

January 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Close up view of golden autumn cottonwood leaves, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

One of the main reasons we visited this particular canyon at this particular time of year and on this exact day was… fall color from cottonwood trees and a few other contributors. This small group was growing almost directly against the cliff walls alongside the river, and when I was there the cliffs shaded the trees and provided softer, diffused light.

While many of my cottonwood photographs set the trees in their surroundings a bit more clearly, in this one I simply wanted to show the colors and patterns and textures of the trees themselves, so I chose to shoot in tight and exclude anything that was not “tree.” These trees really are this colorful, especially in this light. This presented me with a bit of a challenge while working on the photograph in post. When shooting in the shade, as I like to do with such subjects, the light is often quite blue, since the scene is largely lit by that giant blue light box that we often refer to as “the sky.” Most people (other than photographers) would not notice the blue-ness of the scene while standing there, but it becomes quite apparent when looking at the photograph. In order to make the color balance conform to what we think we see when on the scene, I often choose to warm up the color balance of all or part of the photograph. For example, I might move the objectively blue tones of background rocks more toward gray, if the rocks were that color. But here, if I went to the “objectively gray” point, the color of the trees shifts to be warm beyond belief, so here I left the overall balance a bit on the blue side.

(Note: This photograph was originally posted with the wrong title. The error has now been corrected.)

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Trumpeter Swans, Field

December 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small group of trumpeter swans on a misty day in a Skagit Valley field, Washington

Finding myself in a wonderful place to photograph birds, but without the (rather long!) lens I would usually rely on, I had to think differently about how to photograph the migratory birds of Skagit Valley, Washington earlier this week. I was in Washington for something else entirely, but had brought along a minimal kit “just in case…” but wasn’t really thinking that bird photography might be on the agenda until plans changed and I found myself with nearly a full day free. So despite having nothing longer than 200mm, I decided to drive up there from Seattle and see what I could find.

Among the locals, I hear that the area is especially renowned for eagles – which I saw and (barely) photographed a year ago. But I’m also, and perhaps predominantly, fascinated by the snow geese and the trumpeter swans. The geese remind me of the very similar Ross’s geese that I photograph in California, but the trumpeter swans are birds that I don’t really get to see at home. While the geese collect in huge flocks of many thousands of birds, creating an audio uproar that must be heard to be believed, the swans don’t seem to be such social creatures nor nearly as noisy. When I’ve seen them, they collect in small groups, sometimes very small or perhaps including a few dozen individuals. They seem to assemble quietly – apart from the occasional “trumpeting” – and don’t do anything like the swirling, flocking behavior of the geese. Instead, even so often a couple of them will lift off – taking a long, shallow trajectory like an overloaded airliner lifting off – and then fly at low levels across fields.

Having only my “short” 200mm telephoto, it proved nearly impossible to photograph them in the usual bird photography style – trying to come as close as possible to filling the frame with a bird or two. Instead, I started by thinking about how I could incorporate the birds into the landscape. Here, near the end of an empty road, I turned onto an even emptier road and slowly drove up to where I was reasonably close to this group. I remained in the car, using it as my “blind” so as not to disturb the birds, and I sat quietly making a few photographs as they fed in the field. I decided to go with an interpretation of the subject that did not attempt for anything like objective realism, instead trying to evoke the subjective aspects of these birds, caught in a momentary beam of sunlight against a misty and rainy sky and hills.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Flock

August 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A high key rendering of a photograph of a flock of pelicans above the Point Lobos State Reserve.

I photograph birds sometimes – more these days than at some times in the past – but they are generally not my main passion in photography, with a few exceptions. The first of those, however, is photographing pelicans along the Pacific Ocean coast of California where these big, magnificent birds seem to stand apart from the other birds of the area. They are bigger, they often coast rather than flapping wings quickly, when seen they are most often simply passing by on their way to and from some unknown other place, and they overall seem to me to have an almost prehistoric aspect.

Most often when I photograph them I go to some place where I think they will pass and I wait. Places where a rocky peninsula extends a bit into the ocean can be likely spots, as are the top edges of certain bluffs above cliffs, where they seem to float past on updrafts from onshore winds. Often as I wait and watch for them I see other birds and I may photograph them, but I’m always watching in the further distance for the groups of pelicans, usually strung out in lines of a few birds to, sometimes, many – and as soon as I spot them the other birds are forgotten as I watch the pelicans approach. I understand that this year the California pelicans are stressed by some sort of environmental change and many have died and others seem undernourished. This may partly explain why I saw so few on this July visit to Point Lobos, mostly only stray groups of two or three that were separated widely from one another. But late in the day a huge flock came from the south and, surprisingly, rather than floating past quickly they moved slightly inland, where I think they found a thermal, and spent several minutes coasting in circles as they rose higher.

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