Tag Archives: group

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

Ross’s Geese, Winter Evening

February 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Motion-blurred photograph of low-flying Ross’s geese on a winter evening in California’s Central Valley.

From time to time I experiment with longer exposure photographs of birds in flight. The idea is that allowing the image to blur as the birds move might suggest their constant motion more effectively than the more typical approach of stopping the motion. Here not only was the exposure relatively long (I think it was 1/30 second) but I was shooting with a long telephoto which also amplifies the motion of subject and camera.

I’m thinking of this as a “study” for future photographs of these Ross’s geese and similar birds that will work with this idea of motion blur. Making this shot let me get a bit closer to understanding the most likely times to find the birds lifting off in the evening, and the best time to try to catch this with a bit of the last sunlight before sunset. I was also able to slightly better establish the shutter speed I would like to work with for this kind of image. The idea is to keep just barely enough shape in the birds that you can recognize what they are, but to allow the motion to blur things enough to eliminate the hyper-sharp realistic quality of the scene and to let the motion blur imply something about the actual flying motion of the birds.

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

Ross’s Geese Taking Flight, Sunset

February 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

A large flock of Ross’s geese takes flight in sunset light, Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California.

Every time I go back to this location, it seems to just get better. On this early February evening I had quickly driven over the hill from the San Francisco Bay Area – well, OK, it is a two-hour drive – in time to arrive shortly before sunset and join a group of friends who had come down from the Mariposa, California area to photograph the same subject. I drove out around the “auto tour” route to a spot where I had shot just a week ago, near a viewing platform. Just past this point, there were thousands and thousands of (mostly, I presume) Ross’ geese filling a large pond right next to the gravel road. I set up and gradually, bit by slow bit, moved myself closer to the pond, working carefully to avoid spooking the birds. Eventually I got into position perhaps 20 feet from the pond.

Initially I photographed the birds that were settled in on the pond. As we did this, more birds flew overhead, and some joined this gigantic flock. But the light still wasn’t quite great. As actual sunset approached, the geese began to lift off in large groups. It seemed like there would be some momentary electricity in the air – perhaps I was just sensing a change in their calls – and suddenly a few hundred would simultaneously take off in a large group. I knew I wanted to try to get some photographs of these groups, and I also figured that ideally I would like a bit of cross-light from the very low and warm-colored sun and, if I could manage to pull it off, I would want to get some sort of landscape-ish background of trees and ponds and the distant hills in the golden evening light. I made several attempts before I captured this moment during which the group had just risen enough to mostly clear the trees across the pond.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Levee, Fog, and Sandhill Cranes

February 4, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A row of sandhill cranes pass above a levee on a foggy winter morning, Central Valley of California.

This is yet another photograph in which my landscape photographer brain perhaps took over from my wildlife photographer brain. I wrote elsewhere that even when I shoot wildlife, I often catch myself thinking about the landscape in any of several ways. While the birds are overhead, I’m purely in wildlife photographer mode, but during pauses in the action my eyes drift off to fix on elements of the landscape that might make interesting photographs.

Sometimes I put the two together and use a technique that, perhaps oddly, I also apply when doing some kinds of street photography. In essence, I think about what I can control in the scene, namely the fixed landscape elements, and I more or less create a composition with a “hole” in it where transient elements like birds might fit. Now I obviously have no control at all over what the birds will do or when and where they will pass through the frame, so there is an element of chance in all of this. Using a zoom lens helps, in that I can quickly reframe the scene if the birds happen to be lower or higher when they pass by. Needless to say, there is a lot of waiting involved, some of it which could be slightly frustrating as birds fly past just above the frame or too far away, or too low. But every so often they do pass though in an appealing location. To further blur the landscape/wildlife photography lines, I frequently do what I did in the sequence of images from which this frame comes – I pan with the camera on the tripod as the birds move along. In this case, I have to make instant landscape decisions as the background, formerly-fixed elements are now moving in the frame. Yes, landscape photography as an action sport!

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

Sandhill Cranes, Dusk

January 31, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of sandhill cranes against the dusk sky above the Merced National Wildlife Reserve, California.

The sandhill cranes are amazing creatures. On the ground they seem rather ungainly, but in the air they seem, to me at least, to fly with remarkable grace and strength. Several things can make them tricky to photograph. On the ground, they are frequently in less than photogenic locations such as turned under fields, and they are skittish, moving away quickly if you come too close. In flight they can appear and disappear quickly, and if you aren’t looking the right direction you can miss them as they fly over. And they seem to come in waves – you can wait for a while without seeing any of them, let down your guard and become distracted, the suddenly groups of them seem to appear.

I had fewer opportunities to photograph them close up at Merced National Wildlife Refuge on this evening than I had earlier in the day back north at Woodbridge Road. But a few did come close and I managed to photograph this portion of a large group that flew over as the evening light was turning portions of the sky pink and purple.

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