Tag Archives: nature

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Light, San Luis Reservoir

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Winter Light, San Luis Reservoir
High clouds, fog, and brilliant light on a winter day over San Luis Reservoir, California.

Winter Light, San Luis Reservoir. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High clouds, fog, and brilliant light on a winter day over San Luis Reservoir, California.

Because it lies between the southern San Francisco Bay Area and California’s Great Central Valley — and on the route to many interesting places ranging from the Sierra to Southern California and Death Valley — I have driven past the San Luis Reservoir probably hundreds of times over the years. (I’m old enough to barely recall the area before there was a reservoir, from trips when I was a young child.) Being just another part of the system to transport water in the state, I hardly think of it as one of California’s great scenic wonders.

But in the right conditions and the right light, it becomes difficult to ignore it as a landscape subject. The reservoir is huge and it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. Because of the expansive scale, light can reflect off its surface in ways that mimic what I sometimes see along the Pacific Ocean coast. It also picks up the winter atmosphere, with its fogs and mists, from the Central Valley. And because the road runs more or less along its northern shore, all of this is frequently backlit, as in this photograph that I made in the middle of the day while returning from the Central Valley.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Trees, Levee Road, Fog

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Tule fog softens the light on a Central Valley levee road winding among winter trees.

Winter Trees, Levee Road, Fog. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tule fog softens the light on a Central Valley levee road winding among winter trees.

My usual inclination when photographing a place like this is to focus on the natural and to exclude the signs of the human presence. It is perhaps ironic that I embrace the human world in my street photography but often obscure it in my other work. I think this comes from the desire to imagine a “natural” work without, well, us. There are fine reasons to do this, but there are also some reasons to not imagine that we are not part of the natural world. (This subject likely deserves and article, a book, a small library — not a two-paragraph post!)

During the winter months I often photograph in California’s Central Valley, attracted by the tule fog and by the migratory birds. And I mostly photograph these subjects as examples of nature. But the Central Valley is anything but a natural wilderness! It is crisscrossed by roads large and small, increasingly filled by towns and cities, and dominated by the agriculture industry. The good news is that those things are interesting photographic subjects, too. This road more or less winds along a levee at the edge of a large pond. I paused here to look back and the way I had come, photographing the road winding through a gentle landscape of tule fog and winter trees.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Backlit Desert Hills, Morning

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Backlit Desert Hills, Morning
Early morning sun back lights rocky desert hills, Death Valley National Park.

Backlit Desert Hills, Morning. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning sun back lights rocky desert hills, Death Valley National Park.

Given the opportunity, I like to visit Death Valley twice each year — once during winter and again around the start of spring. While the spring visit brings the hope of seeing a brief wildflower bloom, winter is less crowded (and, yes, it can be crowded in this park) and feels more elemental. I’m just back from the winter visit, and I had the chance to both revisit some familiar places and push out the boundaries a bit by visiting locations that were new to me.

I was in a fairly remote part of the park on this morning, awake early to walk a mile or so to my intended subject. Due to the sun direction and geography, I didn’t need to start out in complete darkness… which inevitably meant that I was distracted by the landscape as I walked toward my primary goal. The sand-covered hills in this photograph are located at the end of a much taller ridge, and their extension into the large valley beyond places the tallest peaks in the early morning sunlight. More desert mountains rise in the distance beyond the wide valley.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Snags, Late Winter Fog

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Snags, Late Winter Fog
A group of dead trees next to a riparian meadow on a foggy Central Valley winter day.

Snags, Late Winter Fog. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of dead trees next to a riparian meadow on a foggy Central Valley winter day.

Like several other photographs I have recently shared, this one comes from the Central Valley of California and was also made in the winter. However, this one is from a few years ago and in a slightly different location than my usual haunts in the valley. I made the photograph late in the migratory bird photography season, actually just after the main flock of geese had departed and when the place seemed downright lonely without them! That feeling was amplified on this particular visit, as it was right after the initial March 2020 lockdown, when so much about the trajectory of the pandemic was still unknown. We didn’t yet understand how it was spread or even how serious it was. At that time we were still paranoid of any contact with others, and I recall seeking out the most isolated gasoline station I could find on my way home.

The specific location is of a sort that fascinates me. Much of this valley is no longer exactly natural, being given over to huge agricultural areas. While the sense of vast space remains, what lies beneath it is largely affected by humans. However, in a few places the landscape is not so conducive to agriculture, and the land feels wilder. This is such a place, a shallow depression following the path of a creek which may be dry in summer but can flow rather powerfully in wet winters. I paused on a levee next to the area and photographed across a few old snags and into sun-lit fog.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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