Tag Archives: refuge

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

Blue Geese, Red Sky

December 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Ross’s geese, blue in the fading light of the overhead evening sky, fly against the reds of a wild Central Valley sunset

Back in early December, 2012 we were out photographing migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, on a day that began with extremely thick tule fog, gradually transitioned to hazy sunshine, then was interrupted by the atmospheric muck of an incoming weather system, and ended with a surprising and astonishing sunset and post-sunset display of color. It seems that there must have been a gap between the clouds and the horizon somewhere far to our west, and as the sun dropped to the horizon the late and very red light shone up into the clouds, turning them blood-red (and, at times, pink and purple and orange and more.)

Right before this we had been parked near a very large flock of geese that were mostly grounded, but which would occasionally take off en masse and circle for a bit before settling back in, often quite close to where they started. I had been tracking and photographing them in the somewhat gloomy light, and when the brilliantly colorful sky arrived I was ready to try to take advantage of it. This created a challenge though, that is probably familiar to anyone who has photographed such a sky. It is very bright and (important to those shooting digital systems) very red – which means that it can be necessary to underexpose a bit to avoid seeing very strange things happen to the red channel in the image file. In addition, since I was shooting straight into this brilliant light here, the geese were backlit. So, in post I was faced with a couple of contradictory issues – I had to control the brightness of the sky while trying to regain a bit of detail on the bodies of the backlit and rather dark birds! About the “blue geese, red sky” title… Because the dimmer light falling on the portions of the geese facing me was largely diffused light from a non-colorful (e.g. – blue) part of the sky, their white feathers registered very much as blue.

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

Trees and Pasture, Central Valley

December 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy light in clearing tule fog on solitary trees in California Central Valley pasture land

This is another in a series that might perhaps be called “accidental landscapes.” We were actually at a wildlife refuge not to photograph landscape subjects but to photograph migratory birds – mostly geese, herons, ibises, cranes, egrets and the like. Part of that activity involves driving around trying to find the darn critters! And sometimes during these drives my eyes wander over to something that is much more like a landscape than a bird. I have photographed this very tree in the past, most recently a matter of weeks earlier when I shot it from a slightly different angle that made it appear more isolated, and when it was full of a flock of red-winged blackbirds.

The first thing that attracted my attention this time was something small, the bit of warm side-light on the trunk of the foreground tree. Seeing that, I wondered how I might come up with a composition that made sense and included this little feature. First, I wanted this tree to fill a good portion of the frame. However that seemed a bit too straightforward, so I just moved around a bit until the more distant near-twin tree was just to the left of the foreground tree, being careful to not let them overlap. The photograph was shot handheld, with the same lens that stayed on my camera all day long, a 100-400mm zoom. We moved on and soon found lots of Ross’s geese on the far side of this pasture.

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

Ross’s Geese, Tree and Marsh

December 20, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A thick flock of Ross’s geese flies above a marsh and a solitary tree in California’s Central Valley

After a full morning (and then some!) of photographing mostly Ross’s geese at a Central Valley wildlife refuge, we took a short break for a mid-afternoon lunch and then hurried back to the refuge by about 3:30 for evening photography. One of the last things we did before taking this break was to briefly assemble at the main overlook near the entrance to the refuge, where we were a bit surprised to see lots of geese settling in on one of the nearby ponds, and from which we could look back and see still more geese at the edges of the pasture where we had been photographing them.

As is often the case on a tule fog day like this one in the Central Valley, while the fog did “clear,” the general haziness never did completely go away. Instead the atmosphere remained mildly opaque, and it glowed in the late afternoon sunlight. Looking west, it was almost hard to see into this glow, but that is the direction we looked to see the pond and beyond it some isolated trees and the wetlands disappearing into the distance. Behind us, back on that pasture, the flock suddenly lifted off all at once and the birds made a large loop or two around us. I could see that they were likely to pass by the far edge of this pond and by the silhouetted tree, so I did a “landscape on the fly,” shooting handheld with a 100-400mm zoom as the birds came into the composition that I quickly found.

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

Geese and Sun in Fog

December 17, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small flock of Ross’s geese passes by the sun as it barely shines through dense Central Valley tule fog

Although photographing birds and the landscapes where they are found on a dense fog day might seem like a challenge or perhaps even a disappointment, for me it turns out that the fog makes things much more interesting. While I love seeing and photographing the migratory birds as the warm dawn light hits them, that is usually over fairly quickly. But with fog there are all kinds of interesting mysteries to explore. Birds appear on the edge of visibility, and often you may hear them but not see them. (This was especially true with sandhill cranes on this day. We often heard them, but never caught more than a faint and momentary visual sighting as they briefly emerged partially from the fog as they flew directly overhead.) The atmosphere can glow as the sun tries to push through the shallow tule fog.

At one point during this foggy morning a breeze came up and for a moment it looked like the fog might clear. It became a bit less opaque near the ground and there were occasional hints of potential light as the fog momentarily thinned. The disk of the sun became faintly visible, though it often quickly faded again from sight. When I first saw the sun I thought that since birds were flying overhead from time to time that if I was patient I just might be able to get a photograph of some of them in the fog with the faint sun behind them. You can only “plan” a photograph like this in the most general sense: the amount of fog, its thickening and thinning, and the appearance and formation of the birds are entirely out of the photographer’s control. So I wait and watch… and make a number of photographs.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: refuge

Blue Geese, Red Sky

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Geese and Sun in Fog

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