Tag Archives: mnwr

Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

White Pelicans, Autumn Sky

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White Pelicans, Autumn Sky
A small flock of white pelicans flies against a late autumn morning sky

White Pelicans, Autumn Sky. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small flock of white pelicans flies against a late autumn morning sky

For a long time I thought that all California pelicans were the brown pelicans, familiar to anyone who spends time along the coast. Those magnificent birds (with what seems to me to be an almost prehistoric aspect) glide up and down the California coast, floating past headlands, and sometimes alighting on beaches or rocks. I had seen photographs of other pelicans and wondered that they often were while, even though every pelican I had encountered was not.

It turns out that I was simply ignorant of birds that were close by the whole time. In the past few years I have learned that white pelicans are all over California — in inland areas, in lakes, close to the ocean. They are beautiful birds, especially when in flight. I often see them in groups of perhaps a dozen or two, flying in almost straight lines with slowly moving wings. In my (probably atypical) experience, I either see them on the ground near or in water, and off in the distance, or I get quick glimpses as they fly past me. The latter was the case here. I was not far away when I saw a group take off and head towards a spot not far from my position. I quickly moved there and managed to photograph them as they passed overhead with a larger group of geese in flight against the autumn sky in the distance.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature

Autumn Foliage, Wetlands

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Autumn Foliage, Wetlands
Autumn foliage and a reflecting pond under late Autumn skies

Autumn Foliage, Wetlands. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn foliage and a reflecting pond under late Autumn skies

Fall color varies a great deal from location to location. My East Coast friends remind  me that I haven’t seen anything quite like the forest-wide flood of color that happens there every fall — and they are probably right. (I still need to go to New England and photograph fall color. Too many subjects, too little time! ;-) On the other hand, we West Coast dwellers have a few special opportunities of our own, at least if we have learned where to look for them. One of these opportunities comes from the extraordinarily long color season.

I usually see my first indications of “fall” color in the Sierra as early as late-August. The first hints are subtle, but by halfway into September they are becoming pretty obvious, with the first aspens changing colors, and by early October the show in the Eastern Sierra is quite amazing. Because of the elevation range and north/south extent of the Sierra, the color lasts a long time — higher and more northerly color may come first, while lower elevation color may still be appearing over a month later. Once the aspens are done, the cottonwoods and other lower-elevation trees come into form. At the western Sierra foothill elevations the color can peak close to the beginning of November, and out in the Great Valley and closer to the coast there can still be excellent color in December! That’s when I photographed this group of trees, reflected in a pond and underneath autumn clouds… and at the peak of their seasonal color transformation.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature

Coots, Pond, Autumn Sky

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Coots, Pond, Autumn Sky
A flock of coots and autumn morning sky reflected in a wetland pond.

Coots, Pond, Autumn Sky. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of coots and autumn morning sky reflected in a wetland pond.

Autumn and winter are my favorite seasons, especially but not exclusively for photography. In my part of the world these are the seasons for the most compelling light, the most interesting skies, and transitions of all sorts — the color transition of autumn, the shortening (and subsequent lengthening) of daylight hours, the quicker transitions between rain and sun and fog and wind.  Rather than waiting for those occasional special days, as one often does in the summer, I can just head out and be almost certain of finding something.

This morning was full of surprises. I was up and on the road hours before dawn, expecting to end up in a place full of thick tule fog, where I would photograph a sunrise obscured by this fog and then continue to photograph as it lightened and then cleared. But none of that happened. The weather forecasts were off, and instead it was almost completely clear of fog, opening expansive views to the morning sky. This sky was filled with the early clouds of an incoming Pacific weather front, with only a thin band of clear sky in the distance beyond the edge of the clouds. Shortly after the moment of sunrise, the still-low sun sent its light across the bottom of the cloud deck and the light caught the curving textures of the clouds, here reflected in the water of a pond.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Blue Goose Among The White

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Blue Goose Among The White
A solitary “blue goose” in a flock of white (mostly) Ross’s geese

Blue Goose Among The White. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary “blue goose” in a flock of white (mostly) Ross’s geese

A “blue goose” was something I had heard of but didn’t understand — like the “blue moon.” (Yes, I do now know what that is, too!) A few years ago I ran into a wildlife refuge employee while photographing and we got to talking. He remembered that he had seen an unusual bird earlier that day, and he offered to take me to see the “blue goose.”

That sounded crazy. I had never seen or heard of a goose that was blue in color. (That said, in the right light, the whitest geese can appear to be blue in photographs. I’ll explain some other time…) We came to a large flock of the usual white geese and he pointed into the mob of birds and said, “There it is!” At first I couldn’t spot it but eventually I saw that one of the geese was considerably darker than the rest of the flock. I photographed the goose in this photograph on a different occasion — you should be able to spot the anomalously darker blue goose in the middle of the scene. For the record, the “blue goose” is not a separate type of goose — it is one of the common types, but in an unusual color “morph.”

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.