Tag Archives: pre

Wetlands, Winter Sky

“Wetlands, Winter Sky” — Pre-dawn light colors the sky and clouds above Central Valley wetlands on a winter morning.

Happy holidays on this Christmas morning! This is an older photograph, made on a winter morning a few years ago. I had arrived at this location well before sunrise to photograph migratory birds with a group of fellow photographers. Soon light started to come to the sky, and high, thin clouds started to pick up color in the brilliant early sky. The clouds and colors were reflected in a nearby wetlands pond as birds flew overhead.

I mentioned that I was there to photograph migratory birds, but sometimes I must admit that the birds may be, in part, an excuse to photograph the winter landscape. I certainly do photograph the birds out here — a lot — but I often photograph them in the landscape rather than as individuals. In fact, we’ve coined a term for these photographs of the landscapes of the birds: “birdscapes.”


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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Mono Lake, Before Dawn

Mono Lake, Before Dawn
“Mono Lake, Before Dawn” — Colorful pre-dawn clouds over Mono Lake.

This photograph may look very similar to a previously shared Mono Lake photo — both feature the reflecting surface of the lake and a colorful sky. But they are quite different images, photographed from very different places and at different times of the day. The other one was from an evening when afternoon thunderstorm clouds were dissipating. This one is from just before dawn on a hazy morning with high clouds illuminated by the colorful pre-dawn sky.

While that previous photograph was made right on the shoreline of the lake, this one used a more distant camera position. I had headed up into the Eastern Sierra foothills to search for aspen color, and I was exploring some less-used gravel backroads. This higher perspective allowed me to include more of the lake. (It is hard to see, but it extends far beyond the nearer portion that reflects the colorful sky.).


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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Geese, Before Sunrise

Geese, Before Sunrise
Migratory geese in pre-sunrise sky about the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada crest.

Geese, Before Sunrise. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Migratory geese in pre-sunrise sky above the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada crest.

On these days photographing migratory birds I arrive in darkness thirty to forty-five minutes before dawn. After driving several hours in the dark, the first thing I do is get out of the car. The first impression I always have is the sound of the birds as they get ready for morning fly-out. It is a wild, raucous thing and it always makes me smile. Before long more and more of the birds take to the air as the first light arrives. The birds flying across this brilliant early morning sky are geese.

This photograph would not have been possible on most days photographing in California’s Great Central Valley, and it depended on a particular conjunction of weather conditions. On the foggy days when I prefer to visit, of course, none of this would have been visible at all. On other clearer days the sky color is much more muted. On this visit a thin dome of clouds covered much of the sky, stretching far to the east beyond the crest of the Sierra Nevada. The first dawn light lit these clouds in a display of intense color.


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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Winter Wetlands, Before Sunrise

Winter Wetlands, Before Sunrise
Wildly colorful winter pre-sunrise sky above California Central Valley wetlands.

Winter Wetlands, Before Sunrise. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Wildly colorful winter pre-sunrise sky above California Central Valley wetlands.

When I recently shared a different photograph of this same sky and tree, I mentioned that I might share a different version later on. This is that different version. (More in the next photograph about why I posted both versions.) The scene is a few minutes before dawn somewhere in California’s Central Valley, on a day when the clouds of the next approaching weather front were just starting to fill the sky in the early morning. Because the storms come from more or less the west (behind and to the right of the camera position), the sky remained clear far to the east beyond the Sierra, and the early light was able to illuminate the leading edge clouds of this front.

As I wrote in the earlier post, the intensity and saturation of the pre-sunrise color was more or less unbelievable. In fact, I assumed that at least some viewers of the photograph would think that I had simply pushed the saturation slider “to 11.” (Actually it would be to 100, but you get the idea.) But that’s not what happened here. There are a few hints in the photograph. The most obvious one here — and it was missing in the earlier photograph — is that fascinating patch of normal-looking blue sky in the upper left.


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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.