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

Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

January 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Flocks of sandhill cranes fly through dawn haze above San Joaquin Valley marshland

This is another New Year’s Day photograph – and probably won’t be the last one. The typical process when I shoot here is to start at a parking area near the entrance before the sun comes up, either meeting friends there or else simply pausing to get my gear ready and put on warm clothes. Without fail, I also pause for a few minutes to take in the extraordinary sound of the many thousands of migratory birds, usually coming from unseen places off in the mist or fog, and the sound always makes me smile. I may make a few initial photographs in the dim predawn light, and then I usually move off to start looking for subjects.

On this morning I began my “move” before the sun came up, but moments later I looked over my shoulder to see the first light of the rising sun, and I quickly found this location with a small gap in the tules, a bare tree, and some reflecting water, and I lined them up with the rising sun. In this foggy valley, when the fog is not too thick, there is a brief interval of perhaps a minute or two when the globe of the sun rises behind the fog, which mutes the light and allows me to shoot straight into the sun. Also right about dawn, flights of sandhill cranes lift off and fly in lines above the landscape – and on this morning the two ephemeral events happened simultaneously.

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: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, San Joaquin Valley Sunset

December 25, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese fly toward the setting sun, San Joaquin Valley, California

Photographing these migratory birds involves an interesting combination of planning, intuitive response to the circumstances, and just plain raw luck. (In truth, that is the case with almost all photographs of almost all subjects, but that is probably a subject for a different post at another time.) All of those things were certainly at work in this photograph.

I often photograph in this general area at this time of year – ostensibly because of the migratory geese and cranes and other birds, but also because I love the diverse conditions of light and atmosphere here in the winter (and near-winter) months and the simple landscape. So the choice to be at this location at this time of day was no accident. (A bit more information: I was returning from Death Valley and I had organized this final day specifically so that I would have one hour at this location at sunset on the return trip.) In addition, when I found a large flock of geese in a field – in a place where I know there is a good chance I’ll find them – I positioned myself intentionally to the east of the flock so that the colorful light would be behind them as the day ended… or to their side. In addition, since I’ve photographed this subject before I have a pretty good idea of how to set up my camera to deal with the failing light combined with direct sun and birds in motion, even anticipating how I may have to work the images in post-production. But luck and intuition play an undeniable role in photographing this subject. While I can make some guesses about how the birds will act, I have no control over them at all – and I have to take what they give me. On this evening, they were mostly taking flight away from me and toward the mountains, though certainly not always with the sun behind them. Occasionally large groups would take to the air together, and I would simply track them and fire when it seemed best. Here is where another bit of intuition comes in. While I cannot control how the birds appear in relationship to their surroundings, I can manage to watch birds and landscape as both move in the viewfinder and think about composition even while everything is in fast motion – and, when it all works out, think about how momentary arrangements of the birds do or do not “work” with the light and the landscape. To end with an acknowledgement of how much I cannot control, it was simply fortuitous that this thick flock happened to wheel in front of the distant mountains just as the last edge of the sun was about to slip below the horizon.

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

Geese, Dusk

December 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese take flight into dusk haze and clouds

A group of us – Patty Mitchell, Michael Frye, Claudia Welsh, David Hoffman, Charlotte Hoffman, and I – spent a day photographing migratory birds and the landscape of California’s San Joaquin Valley recently. I hope that it is obvious that this photograph does not attempt an objectively realistic presentation of geese! The facts include… these are almost certainly Ross’s geese, they are passing quickly as they fly between two close flocks in the early dusk light, the clouds in the distant sky are colored blue and pink and purple by post-sunset light. By the time I made this photograph it was almost too dark to clearly make out much of anything in this scene, and certainly not to see clearly the individual birds rising into the air, flying past, or landing among other birds already on the ground.

From a certain point of view, this photograph does everything “wrong” when it comes to wildlife photography in general and bird photography in particular. The shutter speed was something like 1/8 of a second, and kept that “short” only by underexposing by nearly a full stop and shooting at ISO3200. The shot was hand-held with a 400mm focal length. Geese, barely visible in the twilight gloom, where coming and going in almost unpredictable ways, yet getting an interesting arrangement of birds in the frame required quickly responding to what they did and then panning while shooting. I had positioned myself to the east of the flock in the hope of getting some interesting sky behind them, so I was also trying to remain aware of the background while tracking the birds. Clearly, this is not a recipe for razor-sharp, carefully and thoughtfully composed images! Additional work was done in the post-processing phase – to deal with the inevitable noise and with balancing out the luminosities of various parts of the frame and bringing out details that might otherwise be lost. Yet, with enough shots and some intuition from photographing these birds in these conditions before, it is possible to make something happen. In the end, for me a photograph like this can evoke the mystery of what happens in the deepening twilight – the sudden unpredictable motion, the sounds of the geese, the hazy atmosphere, and the gathering darkness.

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

Flight of Geese, Twilight

December 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A huge flock of Ross’s geese takes to the sky in the twilight

I probably don’t really need to point out that geese to not look like this, at least not in the objective sense, and that this image is about a subjective impression of these birds and their world. When photographing geese, at least the geese I work with in the California’s Central Valley, long periods of sitting around while not much happens are periodically punctuated by moments when the world goes nuts. For reasons that are often not at all clear, a flock of many thousands of geese that has been on the ground feeding will suddenly lift off as one in a maelstrom of sound and flapping wings. They often head off in some direction, and the group turns in this and that direction and spreads out… and after a few minutes returns to the ground, often in the same or nearly the same spot they just left. After this wild flight ends everything returns again to relative calm.

In the evening as the light fails, I often continue shooting as long as I can, gradually raising camera ISO, opening the aperture all the way, and pushing the shutter speed lower and lower… until there is no longer any way to continue to shoot in the normal fashion. On this evening I finally looked down at my camera to note that I was shooting wide open and ISO 3200 and at 1/5 second or longer… with a handheld 400mm lens! By this point one (at least this one) can no longer really even see the geese with clarity, especially on a typical Central Valley evening when the air is thick with haze and incipient fog. While it might seem like a good time to put the camera away and go have some dinner, at this point I look forward to one final and very special photographic opportunity during this marginal dusk time between sunset colors and blue hour light. I go with the slow shutter speeds and the impossibility of clearly seeing the birds, much less stopping their motion with fast shutter speeds and perfect focus, and I instead play with camera motion and soft focus and the motion blur of the birds themselves. And given that this cannot in any way produce objectively accurate and clinically precise depictions of the birds, I instead go for a sort of subjective truth that represents their wild and only have visible flight through twilight sky.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: in

Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

Geese, San Joaquin Valley Sunset

Geese, Dusk

Flight of Geese, Twilight

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