Tag Archives: photography

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

Two Sandhill Cranes, Winter Sky

March 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Black and white photograph of two sandhill cranes taking to the air against a cloud-filled winter sky above the Merced National Wildlife Reserve.

This is another photograph from my detour to the Merced National Wildlife Reserve as I returned from my February trip to Death Valley. I arrived late in the day as a winter storm was just beginning to clear, and at times the migratory birds flew in front of a cloud-filled sky that ranged from dark and ominous to being colorfully lit by sunset light.

I chose to render this photograph in black and white for several reasons. First, to be quite honest, I wasn’t very fond of the particular coloration of the clouds behind these birds! However, in black and white the shapes and glowing quality of the sky seem to work better in this case. And from this distance the sandhill cranes’ coloration is subtle enough that I don’t feel that much is lost by going to monochrome.

I think I have mentioned earlier that when I photograph birds like these in flight I try to keep my eye not only on the birds but also on the background. I don’t have any control at all over what appears behind them, but I do have control over when I press the shutter – and as they pass in front of clouds and other background elements I try to time shots to place the birds in interesting compositions relative to these subjects. Every so often I like to think that I actually succeed! :-)

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Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Purple Dawn, Mono Lake

March 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pastel shades of purple and blue just before dawn at Mono Lake.

Back at the end of 2010 I wrote that I was going through all of my 2010 raw files to look for images that I had passed over, as I do near the end of every year. Things got busy, I got distracted, and I only got about half way through the year’s files. Recently I have returned to the 2010 photographs to try to complete the task, and this is one of the photographs that I rediscovered as I resumed the search with images taken near the end of June.

This was my first real photographic trip to the Sierra during the summer season of 2010. I had made a brief trip up there, visiting Yosemite Valley and then crossing Tioga Pass, back in early June right about the time that the pass opened. However, on this trip I was able to spend several days in the high country and kicking around near Mono Lake. This can be a great time of the year up there since conditions range from what seems like late winter in the high country to real summer in places like Owens Valley and around Mono Lake.

On this morning I decided that I’d head down to Mono Lake well before dawn and see what I could turn up. I did not go to the iconic South Tufa area on this morning, thinking instead that I’d try for some different and longer views of the lake. (Later in the morning I traveled a good distance south of the lake on the less-used section of highway 120.) There were, obviously, clouds in the morning and they blocked the sunrise. However, the light glowed through and over and under and around them, and even though there was not direct light in very early morning image, the colors were quite something. The group of tufa towers at the lower left are offshore not far from the South Tufa area.

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

Desert Pool, Panamint Range, Morning

March 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

A salt spring pool on the salt flats in Death Valley reflects winter dawn light on the east face of the Panamint Range.

Sometimes I hear people describe how they think or imagine that landscape photography is done, and I wonder where they get their ideas. I will acknowledge that there are many ways to shoot landscape, ranging from working very slowly and carefully to produce a single image, to shooting like crazy and seeing what you end up with. But often people dismiss approaches closer to the latter and assume that the former is the “right way” to shoot landscape.

In my experience it isn’t quite that simple. Sometimes the experience is like certain others in which long stretches of time during which one seemingly accomplishes nothing or perhaps just looks and thinks are suddenly followed by quick and intense spurts of work that come almost as a surprise and may be over as quickly as they begin. This little morning shoot in Death Valley along the edge of a the salt/mud flats where the water from a small salt spring spreads across the flats and forms shallow pools was one of these. Very early in the morning, well before dawn, it was difficult to know what the best shooting option might be. There were clouds in the sky that promised to block the dawn light and everything seemed gray and flat. I wandered a bit, not sure where or what to shoot, and finally, more or less by chance, ended up at this spot that I had visited earlier on this trip. It occurred to me that even if the light wasn’t great I could possibly find a photograph that included this water. So I stopped and began to unpack in no particular hurry.

As I walked across the wash toward the area of the spring, much to my surprise it began to appear that there might be some interesting dawn light after all. I quickened my pace and headed toward the area of the shallow pools, and when I arrived there a moment later I could see some color on the top of the Panamint range. I quickly found a decent foreground pool and as the surprising light worked its way down the front of the range I began photographing. I first made several exposures at much shorter focal lengths, including a larger portion of the sky and the foreground. Then I quickly moved the tripod to place this pool in the center of the frame and hold the reflection of the range. I had little time to contemplate as the light was changing very quickly. I had just enough time to find my composition and make a few exposures, and within moments the light was gone.

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

Seven Sandhill Cranes in Flight

March 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Panoramic photograph of seven sandhill cranes in flight above the Merced National Wildlife Area against a sky full of clearing evening storm clouds.

As I wrote when I posted the first in this series recently, on my return drive from Death Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area I realized that I had enough time to stop at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve just before sunset, so I altered my route so that I could drive out on Sandy Mush Road (I still love writing that road name!) to the Reserve and do a little bit of photography. Although I’ve done a bit of wildlife photography, it isn’t my main thing and this is the first year that I’ve headed out to the migratory bird areas of California’s Great Central Valley – so this is a relatively new experience for me.

I had seen video and photographs of the morning “fly out” and evening “fly in” at several locations in the Valley and was hoping that I might get to witness something like this. That didn’t happen, though at one point I saw and heard the event taking place at pond a ways north of the road I had stopped on. I’m getting the impression that this experiences probably requires some persistence and repeat visits. However, I did find a field that was filled with scores of sandhill cranes. I quietly stopped my car, grabbed the camera with a long lens, and got out on the side away from the field and watched quietly. Even these attempts at quiet weren’t enough as the birds began to edge a ways away from the roadside edge of the field before they quieted again and went about their business.

Before long a few small groups began to take flight. I was fortunate that a storm had just passed through and the remnant clouds were beginning to clear in the west, both providing a dramatic background in that direction and allowing a bit of colorful light to strike clouds directly above and to my east. This brings up an observation about photographing birds – admittedly from a photographer who isn’t quite an expert on this but who likes to try to learn… thinking about what is behind and around the birds is often as important as getting the birds themselves into the frame. I like to say that in this series I was thinking about the clouds almost as much as I was thinking about the birds. As I continue to practice and learn how to photograph these animals in flight, I find that I can begin to simultaneously think about keeping them framed in the viewfinder in interesting ways and remain aware of what else is in the frame as I pan.

Special thanks to my friend Tom Clifton for helping me identify some of the other birds I photographed on this visit.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM at 400mm (at B&H)
ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/3200 second

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