Tag Archives: migratory

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

Trumpeter Swans, Field

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

Trumpeter Swans, Field. Skagit Valley, Washington. December 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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

Ross’s Geese Take Flight, Dusk

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Ross's Geese Take Flight, Dusk - A flock of Ross's geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.
A flock of Ross's geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.

Ross’s Geese Take Flight, Dusk. Central Valley, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of Ross’s geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.

Yes, another photograph of geese taking flight above a California Central Valley pond. I can’t help myself! :-) After photographing the dwindling flock, as they left in large groups during the hour before sunset, at the point of most beautiful light there were only a few left. This group was among the very last to depart from this pond, and at this point it was dusk and the colors had gone from the crisp blues of an hour earlier to warm pinks and reds and purples. We were lucky enough to be very close to this large flock for at least an hour.

I’ll use this photograph to make another technical observation. I made what might seem like an odd choice regarding exposure for this shot. Here I wanted to try to stop the motion of the birds as they lifted off. (In other photographs of this subject I intentionally allow the motion to blur.) This meant that I needed a relatively short shutter speed. Even after raising the ISO to 400 and opening up the largest aperture on this long lens, the result was still going to be underexposure. for what I had in mind for this sequence of shots, I wanted to avoid using an ultra-high ISO with the attendant increase in noise. So I chose to deliberately underexpose these shots by perhaps a couple of stops, trusting that I’d be able to compensate for this in post since I shoot in raw mode. In other words, if you are the sort who scans EXIF data for exposure information and then tries to make sense out of it or even use it yourself… you have been warned! :-)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Ross’s Geese, Sunset, Central Valley

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Ross's Geese, Sunset, Central Valley - Ross's geese in a Central Valley pond, sunset.
Ross's geese in a Central Valley pond, sunset.

Ross’s Geese, Sunset, Central Valley. Merced NWR, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Ross’s geese in a Central Valley pond, sunset.

Here I’m going to go with the slightly guilty pleasure of sharing a photograph with colors so intense they almost don’t fit in the color space of online jpg images! This was almost, but not quite, a last second “grab shot” as I looked up and saw a few geese remaining in this pond as the sun was slipping behind the ridge of the coast range. Not long before there had been thousands and thousands of these geese in the pond, but group by group they had all departed for wherever it is that the go at night… except for a very few stragglers, including this group. I like to think that they perhaps share my fondness for beautiful sunset light and had thus chosen to stick around a bit longer. ;-)

This isn’t a photograph that you can really quite plan. Because of the subjects that I had been shooting right before this, it happened that the sun was setting to the left of that compositionally-significant peak along the distant mountains. And fortunately everything was placed so that I could just barely keep the sun itself out of the frame on the left edge. And then I found myself looking at a small number of straggler geese still in the pond. I think I exposed perhaps three frames, and luckily for me they cooperated and assumed such interesting relative positions! One lone bird at the far left looking out of the frame; four of them near the opposite edge and lined up facing right; a group of three closely spaced and facing toward a central point; and one slightly separate from them and facing the opposite way from the bird at the far left. Wow. Talk about good fortune – or well-trained geese!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Snow Goose Maelstrom

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Snow Goose Maelstrom - A swirling mass of snow geese taking flight above Skagit Valley, Washington.
A swirling mass of snow geese taking flight above Skagit Valley, Washington.

Snow Goose Maelstrom. Skagit Valley, Washington. February 19, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A swirling mass of snow geese taking flight above Skagit Valley, Washington.

(You may need to look at this one for a moment in order to understand what is going on.) I photographed these birds in what I believe Washingtonians might refer to as the “Lower Skagit River Valley” area of Washington. I visited the Seattle Area in mid-February, and managed to get one full day to drive up to Skagit Valley and look for the famous birds that are found there: snow geese, trumpeter swans, bald eagles, and more. I arrived there just before dawn on a cloudy and drizzly morning. Not really knowing the area, at first I wasn’t exactly certain where to look. I started just outside of the town of Conway, where fresh green fields occasionally held groups of trumpeter swans, though they all turned out to be a bit too far away for effective photography. Soon I decided to continue on the road out of Conway, driving in the general direction of Laconner and Anacortes. About half way between Conway and Anacortes, the road crosses a large bridge over the river through a forested area. Just before this bridge, I found my geese! As I approached I caught (thrilling) sight of airborne birds heading toward and landing in a field, so I pulled over and began photographing them. There were many thousands of snow geese, mixed in with some trumpeter swans and a few odd ducks.

As I have photographed the migratory birds this season, mostly in California’s Central Valley, one of the ideas that I got in my head was to photograph the massive flocks as they take off, using longer shutter speeds to create some motion blur and long focal lengths to compress the flocks. So, after making a few photographs at more normal and reliable shutter speeds, I switched to an unusually low shutter speed for a hand held 400mm lens and prepared for the inevitable lift off of the flock. I didn’t have to wait long. As the flock, with its edge barely more than 50 feet away from me, lifted off all at once, I used the long lens to crop closely and tracked the flock as it rose and expanded. While the initial impression of the resulting photograph might be “lots of blurry stuff!,” a closer look begins to reveal some detail and order in the madness, and individual birds can be isolated from the background blur. For the interpretation I had in mind, additional work was needed in the post-processing phase, including some work to control the blur and find edges, and some overall adjustments to dynamic range and color.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.