Tag Archives: pink

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

San Francisco, Winter Evening

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San Francisco, Winter Evening - Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.
Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.

San Francisco, Winter Evening. San Francisco, California. January 1, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.

On New Year’s Day 2012, we joined a group of “photo walkers” who were shooting some of the old military structures high in the Marin Headlands area across the Golden Gate and north of San Francisco. After meeting up with all of them and photographing these interesting old sites, we left them as they went off to photograph Rodeo Beach. (We realized that we would need to get back home a bit earlier since my plan was to leave for six days in Death Valley the next morning… and I had not yet packed!)

Since we were already in the area, we took a quick detour up to the Hawk Hill area high on Conzelman Road to check out that famous view across the Golden Gate Bridge toward San Francisco and points beyond. I don’t go here every time I’m in the area, but if I’m already there, it is about to be sunset, I have an extra half hour, and there is the potential for interesting light… what the heck! Once we got there I noticed that some winter haze was distinctly softening the light as the sun was just about to set, and this created a beautiful glowing gradient of colors in the sky and washed the City in pastel light. In this photograph I resisted the temptation to pump things (contrast and saturation) a lot, and intend tried to maintain the subtle coloration of the scene.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Trees, Pond, and Birds in Twilight Sky

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Trees, Pond, and Birds in Twilight Sky - Migratory birds fly through twilight skies above trees and ponds at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.
Migratory birds fly through twilight skies above trees and ponds at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

Trees, Pond, and Birds in Twilight Sky. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. February 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Migratory birds fly through twilight skies above trees and ponds at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

On an early February Saturday evening, four of us converged on the Merced National Wildlife Refuge from far-flung locations – two from the San Francisco Bay Area and two from the Sierra Foothills – to photograph the evening fly-in of migratory birds. We arrived well before the golden light of evening and had plenty of time to get settled in and find birds and other things to photograph. The first “target” was a large, no make that huge, flock of geese that were in a pond of the far side of the road around the refuge. We photographed these birds, both in the water and as groups of them took off and flow (sometimes) over our position.

As the evening wore on the bird “action” began to slow down. Some of us wandered off to shoot other subject including the interesting trees and brush along the levees that separate the ponds. I can’t speak for the others, but I had decided that “the show was over,” and that we had probably seen as many of the large migratory birds as we would see that night. You can’t completely predict where and when they’ll show, so one has to be a bit philosophical about this. Then, without warning, we began to hear the calls of large numbers of birds from the south and moments later flock after flock began to fly right over us and then circle above the pond in front of us in huge groups. There was a bit of light still, and I managed a few photographs in this beautiful but marginal light before we pretty much stopped photographing and simply marveled at the spectacle.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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

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: Northern California

Two Owls, Trees and Ponds, Dusk

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Two Owls, Trees and Ponds, Dusk - Two owls in the branches of a group of trees at dusk, reflected in the waters of a pond at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge
Two owls in the branches of a group of trees at dusk, reflected in the waters of a pond at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge

Two Owls, Trees and Ponds, Dusk. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. February 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two owls in the branches of a group of trees at dusk, reflected in the waters of a pond at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

I originally posted this in an impromptu manner and out of sequence back on SuperB owl Sunday – but now it comes up “officially” in the queue. At the very end of a winter day that had begun well before dawn back up the Central Valley closer to Sacramento (in the Cosumnes River area, to be precise) we had headed south to Merced National Wildlife Refuge in search of somewhat different subject for the evening. We arrived to find some geese on the pond, but most were a bit too far off for good photography. But while we settled in to wait for whatever else might show up, I turned my attention to the beautiful and wide-open Central Valley landscape.

This little group of trees grows on a small levee between a couple of ponds in this agricultural area. (Over the past few weeks I have come to know this exact spot very well, as I have been back three times now to photograph there, with better and better luck each time.) After the sun set, some of the most beautiful light appeared – the soft and pink/purple/blue atmospheric light of dusk, when there is still some brighter color in the sky. I saw a single bird high in one of the branches of this tree and soon figured out it was an owl. I set up a composition that centered the tree – creating, I hope, a sense of quiet and stillness – and which included a bit of the sky and the beautiful reflection of the tree’s silhouette in the water. As I shot, a second owl showed up for a few seconds and I was able to get a frame with the couple together.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Migratory Birds, Ponds, Pre-Dawn Light

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Migratory Birds, Ponds, Pre-Dawn Light - Large flocks of migratory birds stand in ponds and take to the sky in predawn light.
Large flocks of migratory birds stand in ponds and take to the sky in predawn light.

Migratory Birds, Ponds, Pre-Dawn Light. Central Valley, California. January 28, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Large flocks of migratory birds stand in ponds and take to the sky in predawn light.

I almost didn’t stop to photograph these birds and this scene. I had just driven close to two hours to meet a friend and photograph in this area, and I was running late. (It is a long story involving an early alarm, someone sleepily turning the alarm off as to not wake his spouse, and that same someone beginning to form a vague thought that an alarm should have gone off or something, and then looking at the clock and realizing that it was now nearly one hour later than planned.) I turned off the main highway and called my friend to see where he was and then started down Woodbridge road to his location. Within a minute or see I passed an official-looking viewing spot, saw a bunch of other photographers, thought about stopping, but decided to continue on.

Shortly after this – probably within a matter of seconds – I passed by these flooded fields and saw huge number of birds, sandhill cranes and who knows what others, crowding the ponds in numbers I had not seen before. I quickly pulled over, assembled some camera stuff, all the while listening to the absolutely astonishing sound of thousands of migratory birds greeting the dawn. As amazing as the visual spectacle of these birds can be, I am at least as impressed by the wild sounds that they make, especially when assembled in these huge flocks. In any case, I quickly attached my long lens to my camera and my camera to the tripod and lined up a shot out over the ponds and towards the deeply colorful predawn sky just as flocks of birds took off and strung out across the sky.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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

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.