Tag Archives: morning

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

Wetlands, Morning Fog

July 13, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog clears from Sacramento Valley wetlands on a winter morning

I love these winter mornings out in California’s Great Central Valley — cold, damp, perhaps foggy or perhaps clear, with the sights and sounds of migratory birds all around. This was my first visit to this wildlife refuge up in the Sacramento Valley, and I was in exploration mode on this visit, trying to get my bearings and begin to understand the rhythms of the place. It was a mostly clear morning, with high clouds from Pacific Ocean weather above and pockets of tule fog below.

It is easy to imagine that the wildlife refuges are wild places, someone along the lines of small wilderness areas. But the truth is more complex, at least at the refuges I’m familiar with. They are actually managed landscapes, with water levels carefully controlled to support various kinds of wildlife and even the growth of plants managed for their benefit. Those beautiful foreground curves of stubble in the water are the result of management — over the course of the season such grassy areas are cut down to ensure an optimum balance of open water and tall grasses. Beyond the water lies another peninsula lined with trees, with fog beyond and that winter sky high above it all.

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Morning, Mountains, Desert Canyons

June 21, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cloud-filled sky at first light above desert mountains and canyon, Death Valley National Park

As I post this photograph on the summer solstice, this location is perhaps not a place you would want to be right now. I understand that temperatures in Death Valley National Park have been in the 120 degree range already this summer. But back on this March morning the scene was a lot different — clouds from a passing Pacific weather front obscured the dawn light, and there was a pleasantly cool wind at this location high in the Panamint range as the morning light arrived.

This view looks down through one of the many gigantic canyons of the Panamint Range, a sight that reminds us of just how important the flow of water has been in the creation of this remarkable landscape. In the middle distance the salt flats of Death Valley are visible at the base of the Black Mountains, and above that the demarcations between mountains and clouds and sky and light are hard to see, and the terrain of the rugged Death Valley landscape almost merges with the ephemeral terrain of this sky.

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

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Breakwater, Bay

May 28, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The shadow of a breakwater across a view of San Francisco Bay

I’ve had an obsession with the morning light coming across the San Francisco Bay ever since I started taking an early morning train up there and walking the waterfront, making photographs. The light varies, but it is almost always interesting — muted by fog, brilliantly bright when there is lighter haze, reflecting off the water when the skies are clearer. That latter was mostly the case on this morning, with only a few clouds left from a late-season rain storm that was clearing out.

I began photographing some pier not far from the South Beach Harbor, and as I walked out onto one of them I was intrigued by the overlapping patterns of breakwaters near the entrance to the harbor. As I looked to the right of that entrance the low breakwater cut the bright reflections of morning sun, placing an almost black line across the water parallel with the horizon line.

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

Dawn Arrival

May 21, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter geese fly in to a Central Valley wetlands pond at dawn

Near the end of May I revisited some photographs from the past year, including a set that I made on an annual New Year’s Day visit to California’s Central Valley. For several years now a group of friends, photographers, artists, and more have greeted the dawn of the new year by going together before dawn to celebrate the new year and the annual spectacle of the winter bird migration into the valley. So, during the first week when the temperatures here in California rose into the nineties, I enjoyed recalling a foggy morning when they sat near freezing.

We arrived a half hour before dawn to find patchy, thinning fog. We set out trying to determine, in the half-light, where the birds might be, and soon some were spotted settling in on a nearby pond. We headed that way, and I lined up a view across the pond, past quiet foreground birds and past a row of trees toward the eastern sky, which was gradually beginning to brighten. I made this photograph as another small group of birds was flying in to join those already on the pond

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: morning

Wetlands, Morning Fog

Morning, Mountains, Desert Canyons

Breakwater, Bay

Dawn Arrival

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