Tag Archives: national

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

Pond, Trees, Reflected Winter Sky

July 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A seasonal wetlands pond reflects a tree and foggy winter sky

This is the second in this sequence of three photographs that I’m sharing this week. All three were made nearly a half year ago on a foggy winter day in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where I had gone primarily to photograph migratory birds — geese, cranes, herons, egrets, and more. Although I knew what attracted me making photographs of these three scenes, as I wrote in the commentary on the first of them, I couldn’t quite figure out how to “see” them as final photographs back then, and they sat in my raw file archive until I recently reviewed this older images and saw how I could work with them.

There is a thread (among many) in my photographs of shooting very brightly lit fog, clouds, mist, and haze. I love the way that these atmospheric conditions can seem to glow from within when the conditions are right, and I’m especially attracted to such light when it is both slightly transparent and so brightly lit that it is almost hard to look directly into it. In these three minimalist landscape photographs I have pushed things back toward that very bright end of the luminosity scale. There are some black tones in this image, but they are very small, and almost everything else is much brighter.

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: Northern California

Pond, Fog, and Sky

July 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few migratory birds on the reflecting surface of a wetland pond on a foggy morning

This is one of a series of three photographs that will appear here during the next few days. As I post each of them I will have a bit more to say about the ideas behind the series, which means that story will be incomplete until they are all posted. (It may remain a bit incomplete even after I post them all, but that is a different issue.) I’ll use the first photograph to say something about the circumstance that led to them. I’ll also point out that if your taste runs to big, monumental, extravagant landscapes… these don’t work that way. They are, I think, much more quiet, subtle, and introspective images. I have made small test prints, and I think that these may perhaps lend themselves to large prints on matte paper.

Nearly a half-year ago I was in California’s San Joaquin Valley, with the primary goal being to photograph migratory birds, but also with the companion goal of photographing the minimalist landscape, the expansive sky, and the changing winter atmosphere. At one point I saw a scene that was mostly sky — the actual sky and its reflection in large, still wetlands ponds — and light diffused by tule fog. I had a sort of intuitive idea about what I saw in these scenes (which I may describe more in a follow-up post) but I wasn’t quite certain how to interpret them in the post-camera part of the process. I looked at them shortly after making the images and then left them behind as I moved on to other work. Very recently I was going back through older photographs, came upon these, and a way to interpret them as black and white photographs immediately seemed obvious. I’ll write a bit more about that soon, but here I’ll end with the thought that sometimes photographs have to “age” a bit before I/we can see them for what they are and what they might be.

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

Fog, Trees, and Pond

July 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tule fog nearly obscures a San Joaquin Valley pond and surrounding trees

This particular fog condition developed quickly as we were out in the San Joaquin Valley early on a winter morning photographing birds. The winter tule fog in the Valley is often quite thin — so thin, in fact, that you can sometimes seen the stars and moon above on a night when you can barely make out object 100 feet in front of you. This was that sort of fog, but a gentle breeze was also moving it around and changing the conditions from moment to moment. I recall coming to this spot, where the marshland water extends for some distance, and noticing that the trees were alternating between the state of “barely visible” and “not visible at all,” and the fog was brightly lit from the morning sun and sky.

This sort of subject is a bit challenging to photograph and to work with in post. The contrast is obviously very low, and details are hard to see, making focus a bit tricky. And the low contrast almost certainly requires a bit of work in post to get the right combination of diffuse, luminous atmosphere and enough detail to produce an image that makes sense. Here, since the sky was actually quite bright, I wanted to push the sky close to white but still retain the subtle shapes of the high clouds. And beyond all of that, I wanted the photograph to evoke the feelings of stillness and mystery that arise on such a morning.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Forest

July 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Redwood trees growing in a gully at Muir Woods National Monument

I had a couple of primary goals on this visit to Muir Woods National Monument: I thought it might be a good location to shoot on this overcast summer day since the high fog softens the light that can otherwise be quite challenging inside the redwood forest. I also wanted to play with a new ultra wide-angle zoom lens, and I figured that this would be a better place for that activity than spending time in an urban setting… even though the latter might allow for more objective lens testing.

I typically arrive at Muir Woods very early in the morning, partly for the quality of the light in the forest at that time of day and partly for the very practical reason that the hordes of tourists from San Francisco are still mostly having coffee back at their hotels! However, I did not get there quite as early this time, and as I entered the park I could tell that it would not be too long before those hordes finished their coffee and began arriving. So I took a side trail up out of the valley of Redwood Creek (the location of the popular nature hike loops) and climbed up towards higher ridges. I was not alone on this trail but there the number of other hikers was reasonable, and for reasons ranging from aesthetic to objective (e.g. – testing that lens) this turned out to be a good choice. As the trail climbed, the views opened both above and below my camera position, and it was possible to shoot straight toward the trees and show a bit more of their height. Here a group of younger redwoods grows closely together in a small valley.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: national

Pond, Trees, Reflected Winter Sky

Pond, Fog, and Sky

Fog, Trees, and Pond

Redwood Forest

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