Morning fog drifts through a stand of cottonwood trees with golden autumn leaves, Yosemite Valley
Like essentially everyone who has photographed much in Yosemite Valley, I know this little stand of cottonwood trees very well. It is an obvious attractive photographic subject since its densely grouped trees stand apart from other trees in the middle of a meadow, its “perfect cottonwood-ness” is broken by the presence of a couple of other trees almost hidden within the stand, there are a variety of potential backgrounds for the small grove, at the right times it can be beautifully lit, and the meadow often forms beautiful ground fog early in the morning during certain seasons and conditions. Since the fall color of the trees seemed near its peak, I made a plan to be out there at one of the potentially ideal times on Halloween morning.
On the prior day I had decided on the spot from which I would photograph, with the idea being to make a fairly tightly cropped photograph of the trees with a bit of canyon wall in the background. With this plan in mind, I woke up in the darkness and arrived here well before sunrise and went directly to the spot I had picked out. I was very happy to find ground fog drifting over the meadow and frost on its dried grasses. I started photographing almost right away, before there was any direct light here or anywhere else in the Valley, and I planned to shoot right through sunrise and the point when the first direct light strikes the meadow and this group of trees. Before long, the first bit of sunlight came to the upper edge of the trees, and the light changed quickly as the beam of light from up near Half Dome moved down across the trees and began to cast alternating light and shadow across the meadow. This image from the series of photographs seems like the best combination of fog (which began to dissipate as the sun arrived), sunlight on trees and meadow, and background still in shade.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
During the past few years I have become a big fan of photographing migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, and now that summer is over I’m anxious to get back out there and get to work on this year’s bird photographs. Actually, we made our first bird photography trip out there about a week ago, on the first weekend in November. Our main goal was to find sandhill cranes, since we knew they were here already, but we were also interested in seeing what else might have showed up.
In keeping with my new policy of posting multiple photographs in a single message when I have too many photographs waiting in the queue, this post includes five bird photographs. Enjoy!
Late in the morning, long after the morning fly out, we were poking around on some rural backroads when we found a lot of sandhill cranes in dormant fields in thinning morning fog. This group thoughtfully posed for me with a distant pair of trees on the horizon.
Three sandhill cranes stand in a dormant Central Valley, California field
I photographed this group in much the same location as those in the previous photograph. While the cranes seem to collect in large groups near water in the evening and early morning, during the day they are often found more spread out in agricultural areas like this one.
Sandhill cranes land on a Central Valley pond during the evening fly-in
In the evening the cranes do a “fly-in” – where large numbers of them land together in areas around water. When we arrived at this small observation area an hour or so before sunset, there were many birds but no cranes. However, I’ve learned that the sandhill cranes often arrive late, frequently after sunset and sometime when it is becoming rather dark. (One of our most memorable migratory bird encounters occurred at another refuge further south in the valley. We had a great day of photographing birds, beginning very early in the morning and continuing through sunset. As the sun set the bird action began to diminish and it became quite dark. It had been a long, successful day, and we were happy to be finished with this shoot. We were just putting gear away when we began to hear a huge chorus of the easily recognized sound of sandhill cranes coming from out of sight to the southeast. A moment later the sky was filled with the birds – I’ve never seen so many cranes together since then.)
Here the birds began to arrive just a bit earlier. The first groups landed a good distance off, but soon a single large crane settled in on this dry area in front of us and began to produce very large calls, as if to say, “come on down and stop here!” Before long other birds did just that. Here the slow shutter speed allows the winds of the landing birds to blur a bit.
A small group of cackling geese in flight against blue sky over California Central Valley agricultural lands
I have a confession to make, and it is a little embarrassing for a person who is as enthusiastic about photographing birds as I am. Basically, I’m not very good at identifying birds, or at least not good at naming them! (This is an “issue” I’ve always had, and not just with birds. I’m so familiar with certain wild plants that I can tell you exactly what they look like in the wet and dry seasons, when the flowers will appear, and when to find them… but I often cannot name them.) I’m always happy when I can photograph with someone who is better than I at this.
I’m pretty certain these are geese! (Good so far?) I used to think that geese that looked like this were Canadian geese, but when I tried to find photos of these birds online to determine what they were, I kept coming up with “cackling geese.” To make things more confusing – at least for me – I understand that the differences between some Canadian geese and some cackling geese can confuse even the experts. Judging by the size and shape of the bill, the size of the birds, and the pattern and color of feathers, I’m going with this identification until someone shows me differently!
Sandhill cranes settle in to a Central Valley pond during the evening fly-in
This is the same group seen in a photograph earlier in this post, with this photograph being made a bit earlier – clearly the case as there are fewer birds on the ground in this shot, and the color of the sky is less intense. If you look closely about a third of the way in from the left edge of the frame, you may be able to see the larger bird that landed first and was then followed by other later arrivals.
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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
“Fallen Snag, Dry Tarn” — The bleached remains of an old dead tree lie on the rocks of a dry subalpine tarn, Kings Canyon National Park
This year was the second of two very dry years in the Sierra Nevada and much of the west. The snowfall this past winter (2012-13) was far below normal and set records in some places. Last October and November it seemed like we might be starting a very wet season, which would have been welcome after the previous winter’s low levels of precipitation, but then the tap was shut off near the end of the year and there was hardly any more precipitation at all during the rest of the season, the portion when the majority of the Sierra’s precipitation falls. Consequently, this has been a strange summer in the Sierra. Although there may have been more monsoonal rain the usual, the effects of the depleted snow pack are obvious. The spring run-off occurred early and was anemic. By July much of the Sierra looked more like August, and I was already seeing signs of fall by early August.
With all of this in mind, it was no surprise to use to find some unusually dry conditions in the Kings Canyon back-country when we visited for more than a week in mid-September. (Though, in some ways, things were less horrendous than I might have expected. Perhaps this was a combination of going at a time when things tend to be dry anyway and, as a local pointed out to me, some recent summer rains.) On our first day at the location where we stayed to photograph for nearly a week I wandered up some nearby meadows towards a lake that I though I might want to photograph. Very close to my campsite I found several completely dry tarns. (A “tarn” is a seasonal pond fed by snowmelt, and many of them dry up each season.) This very old, sun bleached snag lay across the exposed rocks of this one, creating a stark images.
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” from Heyday Books, is available directly from G Dan Mitchell.
A backlit black oak tree with autumn foliage stands in a meadow below Sentinel Rocks, Yosemite Valley
This black oak, like so many in Yosemite Valley, stands in a large grassy meadow. Although the autumn foliage of these trees may seem less spectacularly colorful than that of the big leaf maples and the cottonwoods, the black oak has a more subtle beauty in the fall. But when lit from behind, early or late in the day when the sun is low, the color of black oak leaves can be surprisingly intense. Off all the fall colors in the Valley, in some ways the combination of that of these oaks and the grasses of the meadows where they are found seems to most strongly speak of fall to me.
This single tree is in a meadow filled with black oaks. I would not be surprised to find that there are 100 of them here. On this afternoon I had gone to the meadow to photograph something different, a group of small cottonwood trees growing near the bank of the Merced River. Finishing that project, I was about to start back toward my car when I noticed that a short-lived beam of direct sun was coming down from an opening in the upper cliff walls and spotlighting this tree. Naturally, I changed my plans, took a little detour, and spent a few minutes with this tree.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
