Tag Archives: print

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Birds, Trees, Ponds – California Central Valley

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Birds, Trees, Ponds - California Central Valley - Migratory birds fly over a group of trees at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge as others congregate in a pond.
Migratory birds fly over a group of trees at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge as others congregate in a pond.

Birds, Trees, Ponds – California Central Valley. Merced National Wildlife Refuge. February 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Migratory birds fly over a group of trees at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge as others congregate in a pond.

In my continuing mission to share as many photographs of this little grove of trees in as many ways as possible, I now present – The Trees In Black and White… ;-) I have shot this little group on two successive weeks now, and I’m starting to almost regard them as personal friends. They are located out along the “auto tour” route at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge in California’s Central Valley. From certain angles late in the day they stand in front of a beautiful, luminous glowing sky as the sun moves to the west.

I made this photograph in the early evening, before the golden hour light. Due to these lighting conditions and the typical characteristics of the Valley at this time of year, there was a great deal of atmospheric haze. While later light would reveal the ridge of the coast range in the distance, at this time the glowing haze blocked that view, and its effect can even be seen on the trees along the far levee. As large flocks of birds flew by – I think they were geese – they would pass behind and above the trees. Often they were in odd positions – too low to be visible behind the trees or so high that I would have had to expand the angle of view more than I wanted. But patience helps. I figure that eventually some birds will almost always fly past in the more or less right position, and here a lower string of birds was accompanied by a few flying higher. As I often do with this sort of subject, I compose a landscape around a combination of what I do see (the foreground water and birds, the levees, the trees) and what I imagine I might see if I’m lucky (birds occupying the space on either side and above the trees). Then I wait. I recall pressing the shutter release when the central three birds were centered above the tallest trees.

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: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest

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Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest - Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson
Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson

Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest. Round Valley, California. January 2, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson.

In some ways this is a very typical eastern Sierra Nevada scene but in others, some of which might not be immediately obvious, it is atypical. I made the photograph while on my way to Death Valley in early January 2012. I had done the long drive over Tioga Pass (a first hint about the “unusual” issue) and was headed south to where I would turn east to cross the Inyo Range to that park. As I descended the long grade from Tom’s Place toward Bishop I passed through familiar Round Valley, but this little scene of sagebrush, Sierra foothills, and the crest caught my attention so I quickly stopped and made a few photographs.

The first and primary unusual thing about this photograph is that this was January! In a typical January the peaks here would be completely buried in winter snows – but this January the snowpack brought to mind mid-July. Although the season had started with early and heavy snows in October, things came to an abrupt halt and at this point it had been a month since real snow had fallen. A second slightly unusual thing is that I made this photograph in the mid-afternoon time frame. This is not a time typically regarded as being conducive to landscape photography. However, the high backlight was making the bluish haze more visible and the light was softened a bit by the high clouds, so I went ahead and made a photograph that, I hope, captures the somewhat harsh and dry conditions of the area and the season.

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

Ross’s Geese Take Flight, Dusk

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Ross's Geese Take Flight, Dusk - A flock of Ross's geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.
A flock of Ross's geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.

Ross’s Geese Take Flight, Dusk. Central Valley, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of Ross’s geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.

Yes, another photograph of geese taking flight above a California Central Valley pond. I can’t help myself! :-) After photographing the dwindling flock, as they left in large groups during the hour before sunset, at the point of most beautiful light there were only a few left. This group was among the very last to depart from this pond, and at this point it was dusk and the colors had gone from the crisp blues of an hour earlier to warm pinks and reds and purples. We were lucky enough to be very close to this large flock for at least an hour.

I’ll use this photograph to make another technical observation. I made what might seem like an odd choice regarding exposure for this shot. Here I wanted to try to stop the motion of the birds as they lifted off. (In other photographs of this subject I intentionally allow the motion to blur.) This meant that I needed a relatively short shutter speed. Even after raising the ISO to 400 and opening up the largest aperture on this long lens, the result was still going to be underexposure. for what I had in mind for this sequence of shots, I wanted to avoid using an ultra-high ISO with the attendant increase in noise. So I chose to deliberately underexpose these shots by perhaps a couple of stops, trusting that I’d be able to compensate for this in post since I shoot in raw mode. In other words, if you are the sort who scans EXIF data for exposure information and then tries to make sense out of it or even use it yourself… you have been warned! :-)

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: People, Photographs: Yosemite

Tenaya Lake, January 2012

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Tenaya Lake, January 2012 - Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.
Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.

Tenaya Lake, January 2012. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Skaters and walkers on frozen Tenaya Lake, accessible via the still-open Tioga Pass Road on January 16, 2012.

I have been meaning to post this photograph since I made it last month, on January 16, 2012. The serious California drought (or so it seems) of 2012 created very unusual conditions in the Sierra this winter. The Tioga Pass Road (highway 120) through Yosemite National Park usually closes by some time in November, and has been known to close as early as October. The early season this year made it appear that we might have a normal or even heavier than normal winter – early storms near the beginning of October brought a lot of snow to the range and temporarily closed the road more than once. But by December it became clear that this was not going to be a normal year at all, and by the end of the month there was almost no snow anywhere in the range.

A week before this visit I had crossed and re-crossed the pass on a trip to Death Valley. While I appreciated the convenience and shorter drive, I found the odd conditions unnerving. Aside from a few patches here and there, I saw no snow at all, though the seasonal cold had frozen the high country lakes. A week later it looked like a storm or two might finally arrive, so we decided to make the trip up to the Tuolumne area to see the high country in a state that we probably (hopefully!) won’t see again. During the week before this visit, local news stations around California had made this story well known, and they almost all mentioned that people were visiting Tenaya Lake. And, indeed, there were tons of people at the lake when we arrived. There were about as many cars as you might see on an August afternoon. People were clustered along the frozen edge of the lake, were walking along its borders, even setting up tables for picnics on the ice. A few people thought to bring ice skates and they were skating great distances. (Fortunately for us, most people went no farther than Tenaya, and the crowds decreased rapidly after that point.)

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.