Tag Archives: red

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Rhyolite Ghost Casino

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Rhyolite Ghost Casino - The "Rhyollite Ghost Casino" was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada
The "Rhyollite Ghost Casino" was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada

Rhyollite Ghost Casino. Rhyolite, Nevada. January 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The “Rhyollite Ghost Casino” was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada.

This building in the ghost town of Rhyolite was originally a (very expensive) railway station that was abandoned when the town itself was abandoned after the nearby mines ran out of profitable ore in the early 1900s. According to several sources I have read, the building was then turned into a bar and casino, and many years later was for a time a curio shop and museum. Today it is boarded up and behind cyclone fences – more off-limits than almost any other structure in the ghost town.

I would live to get beyond the fencing and photograph this building more closely. It looks, in some ways, surprisingly modern for something that was constructing in the middle of nowhere about a century ago, and there are a number of interesting elements in the architecture. (I have photographed some of them, and eventually I’ll perhaps post a few.) The green sign on the front of the building appears to be a repurposed sign from the railroad station days. Underneath the fading “Rhyolite Ghost Casino” lettering, barely readable in this photograph, is and older sign declaring in larger print, “Rhyolite.” A walk around the structure reveals other interesting details, including one area that looks like it might have been a booth for a fortune-teller.

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

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley

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Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley - Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California's Central Valley and the Coast Range.
Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California's Central Valley and the Coast Range.

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California’s Central Valley and the Coast Range.

I made this photograph when it was almost too dark to see clearly. In fact, when I packed up and drove away a few minutes later, it was so dark that I momentarily got mildly lost on my way out of the refuge! Long after the sun had set, and at the time when perhaps the most intense sky colors appear, the migratory birds were still in flight above the Central Valley, often silhouetted against the colorful dusk sky just above the horizon.

This photograph is going to get a bit more technical explanation than usual. I had a 100-400mm telephoto on the camera at this point since I had been photographing the birds in a variety of ways, including trying to fill the frame with one or a few birds. While some might say that shooting a prime lens of this length could have some image quality advantages, this photograph wouldn’t have happened if I had been shooting, say, a 400mm prime. Since I wanted to move quickly from targeting small sections of the surroundings or even individual birds to making photographs that attempt to portray the larger landscape within which the birds are found, I frequently found myself moving quickly to much shorter focal lengths. Here, I realized that I might be able to “zoom out” and include some of the birds in flight high above the valley and the distant mountains in the context of their surroundings. So I shot this at something like 130mm. In addition, because the scene includes subjects that are not that far away (like the trees) and those at much greater distances (like the hills), depth of field was an issue with the longer focal lengths. I couldn’t shoot wide open without some excessive focus issues, so I stopped down to f/11. Think about that for a moment: shooting in extremely low light, stopped down to try to maintain some depth of field… and needing use a shutter speed allowing me to get some definition out of birds flying through the scene. This is essentially being caught between a rock and a hard place… and another rock. With the camera on the tripod, but still aimed manually, I used a shutter speed of 1/13 second and turned image-stabilization on. With all of this stuff pushing boundaries of shutter speed and aperture… my only option was to increase the ISO to 1600. For landscape work. Here’s the thing… in the end, while there was more noise in this photograph than if ISO 100 were possible, it isn’t that bad and probably wouldn’t even be visible to viewers of a print. While I’m usually persistent in my view that little technical differences among cameras don’t amount to much, in this case it was because current cameras make it possible to shoot in ways that were essentially impossible a decade ago that I could get this photograph at all.

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.

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

Solitary Bird, Twilight Sky

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Solitary Bird, Twilight Sky - A solitary bird perchs against the twilight sky in a tree at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve in California's Central Valley.
A solitary bird perchs against the twilight sky in a tree at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve in California's Central Valley.

Solitary Bird, Twilight Sky. Merced National Wildlife Reserve, California. January 28, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary bird perchs against the twilight sky in a tree at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve in California’s Central Valley.

On this last weekend of January, 2012, I spent my Saturday photographing migratory birds and other related subjects in the Central Valley of California with my friend David Hoffman. We started before dawn south of Sacramento along Woodbridge Road, moved to the Cosumnes River Wildlife Reserve around midday, and then ended up shooting until well after sunset at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve further south down the valley.

At this time of year, one of the most amazing wildlife miracles takes place just over the hill from coastal California as migratory come south to spend the winter in the wetlands of the Central Valley. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I spent almost my entire life as a Californian unaware of this, even though I’ve always spent a lot of time in the outdoors and even though I had friends who did know about this. On the other hand, it was quite an experience to “discover” this annual event just last year when a friend happened to mention the Woodbridge Road area to me one day.

This photograph is the very last photograph I made on this trip and it was getting quite dark by this time. (EXIF file viewers may notice that the exposure was over three seconds long. I think I need to thank that bird for holding so still!) I had been so focused on looking at the scene through the viewfinder and on making photographs that when I finally looked up from the camera I was shocked to realize just how dark it had become!

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.