Tag Archives: marsh

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

Geese, Wetlands, Dusk Sky

February 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese and colorful dusk sky reflected in wetland pond, San Joaquin Valley

This was close to the final photograph I made on my New Year’s Day visit to the San Joaquin Valley. Despite arriving back from the east coast the night before after 10:00 PM, I was determined be out in the valley at a wildlife refuge for the first day of the year. Up hours before dawn, I drove for two hours in the dark and arrived in dawn twilight to find a couple of my friends were already there. We photographed all morning, in light that changed from pre-dawn fog to morning mist to typical winter Central Valley haze, and then we took a break in the early afternoon to go into town and get something to eat.

By this time the light conditions were looking a bit less promising, as high clouds were blocking some of the light, and this combined with the haze to create some very murky conditions. I had more or less decided to call it a day and, in fact, my friends did decide to head back home. Late in the afternoon I was about to do the same thing, but I realized that my route would take me back past the refuge – so I might as well drop in there and see what was up on the way. It was not much more than an hour before sunset when I arrived and it was still quite murky. But I know that there is often a possibility that these conditions can turn colorful when the distant sky is lit but sunset colors. I worked my way around the area to find this very large flock of geese settling in for the evening and, sure enough, the sky lit up during the last few minutes of daylight and into the early evening.

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: 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.

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

Sunset Fly-In

January 2, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s Geese and Snow Geese settle in for the evening at California Central Valley wetlands

This is a sort of New Years post – the first 2014 photograph to share – but my “2013 Favorite Photographs” post is yet to come. Watch for it later today.

Last year a group of friends decided that we couldn’t imagine a better way to welcome the new year than to assemble along the edge of a San Joaquin Valley marsh before first light, listening to the raucous sound of thousands of geese and cranes, to watch the first dawn of the year through the inevitable Central Valley tule fog, and then to spend the day making photographs. This year several of us resolved to make this an annual tradition and, although not all who came last year could make it, we again assembled at the familiar spot early on New Years Day. (It was a double challenge for me, as I arrived in back California from New York City barely more than 5 hours before my alarm would go off for the drive to the valley. At least the time zone change was on my side, or so I tried to convince myself at 4:00 AM by repeating, “It is already 7:00 in New York!”)

I drove in to the refuge in earliest pre-dawn light and met my friends David and Charlotte, who had arrived a few minutes earlier and were photographing the fog drifting along the edge of the wetlands. We exchanged New Years greetings and listened to the wild sounds of geese and cranes coming from all directions, and then began the (pleasant) work of finding dawn photography locations. We photographed through the morning and then, perhaps because this was a New Years Day “photographers’ holiday” ended up spending an inordinate but very pleasant amount of time standing around talking as the midday light became less conducive to photography. I had decided that I would probably leave for home after the morning shoot, but I succumbed to the invitation to join Dave and Char for a quick lunch in a nearby town, and when we finished eating (and, yes, again, talking a lot ;-) it was late enough that I figured I would make one more pass through the wetlands. I wasn’t certain how the evening would play out photographically, since friends visiting the area the previous day had reported finding few geese and because high clouds seemed to be turning the sky a bit gray and murky. The first good omen was finding a very large group of geese in a pond close to an access road. I stopped here a bit more than a half hour before sunset to photograph the evening fly-in, selecting a location that would place any evening color opposite the geese. Before long the gray sky began to pick up some color and as the process continued more geese arrived. Then, a bit earlier than usual, one of the most impressive events of any evening in this valley occurred – the arrival of thousands of high-flying sandhill cranes, passing overhead and circling in the fading light. A few of them appear against the sky in this post-sunset photograph of the colorful sky, a flock of geese below a lone tree, and the reflecting surface of a flooded field. Soon there was no longer enough light to photograph, and I simply stood by the car and listened to the sound of the cranes and geese until it was time to go.

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

White-faced Ibis

January 1, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A white-faced ibis feeding in a shallow pond, California Central Valley

As a relative newbie to serious bird photograph, I recall my first “discovery” of the white-faced ibis. On an early visit to a California Central Valley wildlife refuge I had been astonished by the huge numbers of birds passing by overhead, and frankly I made a lot of photographs without any idea of what I was capturing. (I still don’t always know for sure – in November I thought I had photographed Ross’s geese, only to be surprised to find that a closer inspection of the photos revealed them to be snow geese.) I recall one morning out near the levee of a major Sacramento Valley river when I saw a beautiful group of birds approaching in dawn light and I managed to get a very nice photograph of “some birds” overhead – and later a friend remarked, “Those are tundra swans!” I’d never even heard of tundra swans before, much less looked for them.

So my first ibis photographs were accidents. I recall photographing a very impressive wedge of black birds flying overhead a few years ago, and then discovering as I worked on the files in post that the birds had surprising (to me!) long and curved bills. I had no idea what this meant, but I was intrigued. I eventually asked a friend who suggested that they might be white-faced ibises. This, like quite a few bird names, confused me, since I had never seen such a bird with a white face. It turns out that I had seen them… but the “white-faced” stage is, as I found out just last week, a seasonal thing! In late November of this year I returned to one of my bird photography haunts and found a very large number of these ibises in one area of the refuge I visited. And not only were there many of them, but they were rather close to my position – so I ended up with a nice basic set of photographs of this particular kind of bird. This specimen was feeding in grasses in shallow water, and as it poked around looking for something to eat it would regularly immerse its beak almost up to its head. I like several things about this particular shot – the red eye is clearly visible, and the interesting feather coloration on this one is interesting. (It can range from black to quite colorful.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: marsh

Geese, Wetlands, Dusk Sky

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Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

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

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