Tag Archives: mnwr

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

Sun Beams, Clearing Fog

February 17, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Afternoon sun breaks through clearing fog in the farm country of the San Joaquin Valley

This photograph, made late on a day spent photographing migratory birds and the landscape they inhabit, illustrates a bunch of things that seem important to me. Each one might be the subject of a short article, but I’ll try to keep it short in this post. One theme might be persistence or patience: This was not the easiest day of photography, with interesting thick fog early in the day, but a midday that seemed to be a bit aimless and included an unsuccessful visit to a nearby area, and a conclusion that was glorious in several ways. Another might be flexibility: I was there primary to photograph wildlife, but I was ready to switch gears and become a landscape photographer when the clouds began to break up in the very late afternoon. It also reminds me to the value of not focusing on the literal depiction of what passes for the objective reality of the landscape, and the importance of focusing on the mood of the place in a subjective way. And it provides an example of how two photographers, working from nearly the same spot, will make quite different photographs and come away with different kinds of successes.

A few days earlier I had photographed at this same location, and late that day I had convinced myself that there would be no great evening light, and I left early. Who knows what I missed as a result of that decision! This time, shooting with a group of friends, I was back on track and eager to shoot until the light was gone. It was an unusual day — great but challenging photography conditions early in the morning, followed by less exciting conditions later in the day. Then in the early evening a large flock of Ross’s geese assembled in a familiar spot and a few of us headed there and positioned the flock between ourselves and the sky to the west, where the clouds were finally starting to break up. During the last portion of the day we were treated to this cloud and light show as the sun played peak-a-boo with the clouds and to one of the most spectacular mass take-offs of geese that I have seen.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron

February 7, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great blue heron in flight above the San Joaquin Valley

The great blue heron is a big and spectacular bird that I sometimes find in the San Joaquin Valley in the winter. It is often along — though occasionally paired up with an egret — and I find them in fields, grassy areas, and occasionally near ditches and creeks. The heron is an impressively big bird, slightly larger than the great white egrets that are often found in similar locations.

In some ways they are not so hard to photograph, though getting close enough to fill the frame with one of them isn’t easy. Often when photographing in an area where I can usually find them, they will seem to be not overly distracted as I come up to a reasonable distance, trying to avoid upsetting the bird. Then, almost invariably, I sense that the bird is nervous about my presence, so I go no closer — and before long it typically takes to the air. (Most often I photograph them from inside a vehicle.) Their flight is beautiful, as they spread their large wings and once in the air glide gracefully. The other sort of opportunity to photograph them is when one simply happens to fly past, which is what this one did. As it crossed in front of me I managed to squeeze of more than a half-dozen photographs of the bird against the foggy Central Valley sky.

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

Ducks, Pond, Fog

February 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ducks settled in on a San Joaquin Valley pond on a foggy morning

Yet another foggy winter morning in the wetlands of California’s San Joaquin Valley. I had started photographing not too long before I made this photograph, though the beginning of the day was both foggy and nearly dark, with barely enough light to photograph. Working in the near darkness and thick fog, right through a sunrise that I could not see, is a mysterious experience. I could hear birds, but I could only barely make out a few of the closest animals though the murky atmosphere.

I moved on and eventually came to this flooded field — to my mind it is a pond, since I’m only in this place to see it in the wet winter season. Aside from an occasional noisy liftoff by one duck or a small group, the scene was very quiet and still. Occasionally a few geese or cranes flew over as the ducks fed silently, moving slowly across the water, and birds that were a bit farther away from me quickly faded into the fog, through which the faint shapes of trees on the other side of the pond were barely visible.

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

Marsh, Tule Fog

February 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Early morning winter tule fog about a San Joaquin Valley marsh

When I first went to this place in the San Joaquin Valley a few years ago, I was only looking for birds. I had visited some wildlife refuges further up the valley already, I heard of this place, and I was intrigued by the name of the roads that go there. On the way back from an early spring photographic trip to Death Valley I detoured this direction on my way home, arrived just before sunset, and found sandhill cranes — I made a photograph that is still one of my favorites of these birds. I returned, sometimes alone and sometimes joining like-minded friends. I learned a lot more about the birds — though there is still much more to learn — and I began to see the place in a wider variety of conditions, and soon began to see not just as a place to photograph wildlife, but also to see it as a landscape.

The experience has reinforced something that I already learned from returning many times to photograph a different area near my home — namely, that there is often far more to see in a seemingly unexciting place than you might first imagine, and that over time such places can become the source of astonishingly varied photographs. Today when I go to this location, I always find something new or a new way to see and photograph something familiar. This morning was very foggy, and long-distance views were unavailable. It was so foggy that photographing wildlife was quite difficult at first. Instead I traveled along slowly and watched as grasses and other plants growing in ponds assembled themselves into surprising compositions as I passed.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: mnwr

Sun Beams, Clearing Fog

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Great Blue Heron

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Ducks, Pond, Fog

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Marsh, Tule Fog

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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.