Tag Archives: morning

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

Cranes and Geese, Fog

February 24, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sandhill cranes and Ross’s geese on the ground and in the air on a foggy winter morning.

This visit to the San Joaquin Valley birds was almost a sort of accident. We were on our way to Yosemite for a couple of days for the opening reception for an exhibit in Oakhurst, and as we headed west from the Bay Area we thought we might just make a detour to one of our favorite spots. Initially it didn’t look too promising — we got on the road later than usual, once in the Valley it looked like it was going to be a “blah” fair weather day. But I had a hunch that there might still be some interesting fog out in this area, so we left the main road on our detour. Sure enough, before long we encountered tule fog, and the refuge we visited was still pretty socked in when we arrived.

We didn’t know what we might find, so we were very excited to find very large and active flocks of Ross’s geese and sandhill cranes in an area close to observations locations. We quickly grabbed camera gear and headed to a spot where we could see them… and we got one of the best bird and light shows of the year so far. The white geese and the darker cranes were mixing together, almost as a single flock. There was action everywhere as birds left, other birds arrived, and still more wheeled overhead. The noise was incredible, and there were periodic excited lift-offs. Shortly after we got there the fog began to thin, and the light went from uniform gray to bands of softly glowing sunlight. Here the birds on the ground stretch off into the fog to the point where they are no longer visible, and overhead hundreds more birds were in flight, and they also disappeared into the thick fog.

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

Ross’s Geese, Foggy Pasture

February 10, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese take off from a foggy San Joaquin Valley pasture

I’ve been out to the San Joaquin Valley quite a few times over the past few months, beginning in the last months of 2014, when there were not yet too many birds there, and as recently as a couple of weeks ago, when large numbers of geese and cranes had returned. (This was a bit of a relief, since many wondered where the birds had gone, especially after this string of drought years in California.)

Our visit to the valley on New Year’s Day was especially nice. Not only did a small group of us literally greet the dawn of the new year in the company of thousands of birds, but we were pleased to see the numbers of the birds had begun to increase again. Among them were the Ross’s geese, who appeared in rather large numbers. While the morning fog was still in the air, though thinning enough to let faint sun through, large groups of them had settled in on the pasture land. The birds were constantly coming and going, as new groups arrived and others left, and as they moved one spot to others nearby, often for reasons that I could not discern. In this photograph the large group still on the ground was in the process of leaving, with a new group taking to the sky every few moments.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Snow, Eastern Sierra

January 23, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunrise snow along the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada

This is a part of California that probably impresses newcomers as being more of a desert than anything else, with rugged high elevation sagebrush country standing in front of the rocky and even more rugged eastern escarpment of the Sierra, where the creeks and lakes and forest glades of the range’s intimate landscape are too far away to be visible. I first loved the Sierra for its alpine wilderness, and back then I was not interested in places like this, but today I find them as much part of the Sierra experience as any alpine lake.

As I do every year at about this time, I was on the “east side” for the fall aspen color. And, as happens at least once every year, I was so distracted by some other element of the terrain that I forgot about aspens for a moment and went off to photograph something else. This “something else” was a combination of things. A light morning snow storm was clearing away from the highest peaks in the early morning light of this autumn day. This light was soft on the thinning clouds and snow flurries was stronger, direct, and more stark on the foreground of sage-covered desert hills

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: morning

Cranes and Geese, Fog

Ross’s Geese, Foggy Pasture

Marsh, Tule Fog

Morning Snow, Eastern Sierra

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