Tag Archives: pink

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

Geese, Dusk

December 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese take flight into dusk haze and clouds

A group of us – Patty Mitchell, Michael Frye, Claudia Welsh, David Hoffman, Charlotte Hoffman, and I – spent a day photographing migratory birds and the landscape of California’s San Joaquin Valley recently. I hope that it is obvious that this photograph does not attempt an objectively realistic presentation of geese! The facts include… these are almost certainly Ross’s geese, they are passing quickly as they fly between two close flocks in the early dusk light, the clouds in the distant sky are colored blue and pink and purple by post-sunset light. By the time I made this photograph it was almost too dark to clearly make out much of anything in this scene, and certainly not to see clearly the individual birds rising into the air, flying past, or landing among other birds already on the ground.

From a certain point of view, this photograph does everything “wrong” when it comes to wildlife photography in general and bird photography in particular. The shutter speed was something like 1/8 of a second, and kept that “short” only by underexposing by nearly a full stop and shooting at ISO3200. The shot was hand-held with a 400mm focal length. Geese, barely visible in the twilight gloom, where coming and going in almost unpredictable ways, yet getting an interesting arrangement of birds in the frame required quickly responding to what they did and then panning while shooting. I had positioned myself to the east of the flock in the hope of getting some interesting sky behind them, so I was also trying to remain aware of the background while tracking the birds. Clearly, this is not a recipe for razor-sharp, carefully and thoughtfully composed images! Additional work was done in the post-processing phase – to deal with the inevitable noise and with balancing out the luminosities of various parts of the frame and bringing out details that might otherwise be lost. Yet, with enough shots and some intuition from photographing these birds in these conditions before, it is possible to make something happen. In the end, for me a photograph like this can evoke the mystery of what happens in the deepening twilight – the sudden unpredictable motion, the sounds of the geese, the hazy atmosphere, and the gathering darkness.

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

Flight of Geese, Twilight

December 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A huge flock of Ross’s geese takes to the sky in the twilight

I probably don’t really need to point out that geese to not look like this, at least not in the objective sense, and that this image is about a subjective impression of these birds and their world. When photographing geese, at least the geese I work with in the California’s Central Valley, long periods of sitting around while not much happens are periodically punctuated by moments when the world goes nuts. For reasons that are often not at all clear, a flock of many thousands of geese that has been on the ground feeding will suddenly lift off as one in a maelstrom of sound and flapping wings. They often head off in some direction, and the group turns in this and that direction and spreads out… and after a few minutes returns to the ground, often in the same or nearly the same spot they just left. After this wild flight ends everything returns again to relative calm.

In the evening as the light fails, I often continue shooting as long as I can, gradually raising camera ISO, opening the aperture all the way, and pushing the shutter speed lower and lower… until there is no longer any way to continue to shoot in the normal fashion. On this evening I finally looked down at my camera to note that I was shooting wide open and ISO 3200 and at 1/5 second or longer… with a handheld 400mm lens! By this point one (at least this one) can no longer really even see the geese with clarity, especially on a typical Central Valley evening when the air is thick with haze and incipient fog. While it might seem like a good time to put the camera away and go have some dinner, at this point I look forward to one final and very special photographic opportunity during this marginal dusk time between sunset colors and blue hour light. I go with the slow shutter speeds and the impossibility of clearly seeing the birds, much less stopping their motion with fast shutter speeds and perfect focus, and I instead play with camera motion and soft focus and the motion blur of the birds themselves. And given that this cannot in any way produce objectively accurate and clinically precise depictions of the birds, I instead go for a sort of subjective truth that represents their wild and only have visible flight through twilight sky.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Sand and Cracked Mud

December 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cracked dry mud curling atop a bed of red sand, illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Dried and cracked mud is one of those strange subjects that seems to be almost irresistible for landscape photographers. Often the concept seems more interesting that the photograph turns out to be, but that rarely stops me from giving it a try. The specific location is entirely unimportant, but I photographed this somewhere in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah while exploring a canyon.

Pardon me while I become enthusiastic about… mud. ;-) These patterns are fairly common, forming where silt-laden water flowed during a rainstorm. Because here the sand is from Utah’s common red sandstone, everything in this images has some red quality to it. The silt itself is tinged pink, and the sand below, some of which ended up on top of the dry mud, is very red. In addition, because this specimen was deep down in a canyon, that beautiful southwest light that reflects off the upper canyon walls casts a lot of very warm colored light onto this little intimate landscape. In fact, without that wonderful light this scene would have little too offer and the coloration would probably be too subtle to work well.

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

Fractured Rock, Reflected Light

December 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few plants grow on fractured pink and blue canyon rock illuminated by light reflected from nearby cliffs

In my experience, the geology of Death Valley mostly features relatively subdued coloration. While this geology is laid bare by the lack of thick vegetation, the colors are mostly shades of gray, white, tan, with occasional blues and greens from mineral deposits. But you rarely will see here the intense colors of, say, the sandstone formations of the Southwest. (Sorry to disappoint anyone, but if you have seen some photographs featuring intensely colorful deposits in places like “Artist Palette,” you may be a bit disappointed to see the real thing!) This is not entirely bad news, as subtle colors can also be very beautiful, and even these colors can become intensified in the right light… and that does occur in Death Valley.

This photograph perhaps tells a story that is partially about the color of rock and a bit about the light, and is also about keeping my eyes open for the fleeting and sometimes surprising examples of color. I was in a place that is not known for brilliant colors, at least not in the walls of this narrow canyon. As I passed through a narrow and twisting section, two things happened, and even though I’ve been there before this was the first time that I noticed them at this point. First, the steep, almost seems cliff-like wall has fractured layers and slabs that remind me a bit of exfoliating granite that I know so well from the Sierra. These layers alternate pinkish rock (that this non-geologist thinks look like some sort of sandstone) with inner layers that have a blue cast. Second, at the right time of day when the light strikes the upper walls of the narrow canyon, the light reflects down into its depths and warms the color of the light, emphasizing these subtle colors to produce what is, at least for Death Valley, some rather striking coloration.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: pink

Geese, Dusk

Flight of Geese, Twilight

Sand and Cracked Mud

Fractured Rock, Reflected Light

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