Tag Archives: nature

Commentary, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Thinking Aloud

Is It Ever Too Early To Dream of Aspen Color?

July 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Small stands of aspens with autumn leaves stand in front of a talus slope, eastern Sierra Nevada.

Is it ever too early to dream of aspen color? In a word, no.

Every summer around this time I start to think about fall color, and for me that primarily means eastern Sierra Nevada aspen color. I’m not quite sure what triggers the thoughts. Sometimes when I’m in the Sierra — and I am not there right now — it can be some nearly imperceptible changes in the light, the atmosphere, the patterns of annual growth, or even the sound of the wind. It might also be something as simple as my now innate “tuning in” to annual cycles, something that I think we are all more able to do than we might imagine.

On hot northern California days like this one, it certainly does not feel at all like autumn. Yet, I know that the first real signs of the seasonally change will appear high in the Sierra in barely 8 weeks, and the aspen color will arrive only a few weeks after that.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Rocky Beach, Cove, and Fog

July 25, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A rocky beach and cove on a foggy summer morning along the Big Sur coast

On July 4 (of all days!) I headed out rather early so that I could make it to the upper Big Sur coastline before the tourist traffic arrived. I succeeded, and there were very few people when I arrived on the foggy coast and drove slowly south while looking for photographs. It being a major holiday, within a few hours the Pacific Coast Highway was filled with visitors, and I turned around and headed back home.

I like several things about this photograph, and most of them have to do with the fact that, in many ways, there is little all that special about the scene. I’m not sure that I could even find this particular cove again, at least not without some careful searching — this coastline is almost a continuum of such places, and almost anywhere you stop and look around a bit you can find such scenes. The fog is another typical element, especially in the summer months, when many visitors are surprised to find that the beautiful sunny scenes that they have seen in photographs are the exception rather than the rule. A typical summer morning in this region? Fog! To many of us Californians, however, this is part of the appeal. On a day when only a few miles inland the temperatures were well into the ninety degree range and perhaps higher, along this coastline I could enjoy the welcome and cool and damp of the coastal fog.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Brown Pelicans, Fog, Water

July 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large flock of brown pelicans flies above the Pacific Ocean on a foggy summer morning

I have a thing about pelicans. They seem to me to stand apart from other birds along the California coast, most often coasting sedately on the wind, either high above as they pass along and above coastal cliffs or else down so close to the water that it seems like they will touch it. I have learned to watch for them, and I know of some places where it is likely that I’ll be able to see them close up, often by going to places high along cliff-top bluffs along which they frequently fly.

This large group completely surprised me — they came out of the blue, and I had not even been thinking about pelicans as I finished photographing a landscape scene from the tripod. I was just about as unprepared as possible for photographing birds in flight. Everything on the camera was set to manual — focus, shutter speed, aperture — and the camera had been in live view mode and on a low ISO. I was at the back of my car removing the camera from the tripod to put it away and probably was in the middle of collapsing the tripod legs when I looked up and saw a huge flock of pelicans just above the roadway to my south. I knew I had just seconds to reconfigure the camera before they arrived at my position — at least I had a long lens attached already! — so I did what I often do in these cases. I ignored the birds as I instinctively went through a bird photography set-up routine as quickly as I could: auto-focus on, stabilization on, camera in aperture priority mode (that’s a long story), ISO jacked up to 800. The only thing I forgot was shifting into burst mode, but that isn’t totally necessary. Finishing this quick sequence, I looked up to find the birds just about at my position, raised the camera, quickly tried to frame the birds against the background of the foggy Pacific, and made a few quick exposures before they moved out of range and faded into the fog.

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: nature

Is It Ever Too Early To Dream of Aspen Color?

Rocky Beach, Cove, and Fog

Brown Pelicans, Fog, Water

Redwood Forest

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