Tag Archives: season

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

Sandhill Cranes, Dusk

January 31, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of sandhill cranes against the dusk sky above the Merced National Wildlife Reserve, California.

The sandhill cranes are amazing creatures. On the ground they seem rather ungainly, but in the air they seem, to me at least, to fly with remarkable grace and strength. Several things can make them tricky to photograph. On the ground, they are frequently in less than photogenic locations such as turned under fields, and they are skittish, moving away quickly if you come too close. In flight they can appear and disappear quickly, and if you aren’t looking the right direction you can miss them as they fly over. And they seem to come in waves – you can wait for a while without seeing any of them, let down your guard and become distracted, the suddenly groups of them seem to appear.

I had fewer opportunities to photograph them close up at Merced National Wildlife Refuge on this evening than I had earlier in the day back north at Woodbridge Road. But a few did come close and I managed to photograph this portion of a large group that flew over as the evening light was turning portions of the sky pink and purple.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Tamarisk

January 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tamarisk plants with autumn foliage on the banks of a desert stream, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

I photographed these tamarisk plants with autumn colors on a cold and extremely windy day in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – most likely, if memory serves, during a brief lull in the wind. It was a beautiful and invigorating day – but certainly not one that was conducive to photographing autumn foliage! We did spend the better part of the day in this canyon, but the wind increased and by the end of our work it was almost strong enough to occasionally stop us in our tracks on the hike out… and then it started to rain!

Tamarisk plants can offer some of the most varied colors of almost any plant, though they are often overlooked because they can easily look drab, especially in daytime light, and because their form is not classically tree-like. But depending on the season and the lighting they can have almost every color imaginable: reds yellow, purple, blue, tan, green. This small group of plants was, obviously, sporting brilliant autumn colors. But, in addition, it was lit by the reflected glow of warm colored light coming from a nearby cliff face in full sun.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Spring Trees, Yosemite Valley

January 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

New spring growth comes to a grove of trees in a Yosemite Valley meadow.

This week, in the middle of winter, I have been going through older photographs, both looking for images I missed and deleting some that I no longer need to keep. Among the photographs in this batch is a set that I made two years ago on a spring visit to Yosemite Valley, when waterfalls were flowing and the trees and meadows were just coming back to life.

There are groves of beautiful curving trees like these in a number of meadows in The Valley, and I always love to photograph them when back-light silhouettes their trunks and branches and highlights the new growth high in the trees. On this morning there was just enough haze in the atmosphere to mute the details of the steep cliffs along the far side of the Valley beyond the trees and the meadow.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dogwood Leaves, Spring

January 4, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.

There is a grove of dogwood trees along highway 120 into Yosemite, between the park entrance and the valley, where I stop several times each seasons. Most recently I stopped there on a quiet autumn evening this past October when the dogwood leaves were turning fall colors. Much earlier in the season I stop to see and photograph the dogwood flowers. I made this photograph several years ago on my first visit to the grove that season, on a rainy morning when the leaves had emerged and the flowers were in bloom.

While the flowers were the main reason I visited the grove on this morning, it turned out that the flower photographs were less interesting, in some ways, than the photographs I made of the leaves of the dogwood trees and of other newly sprouted plants. Not only where the plants young and fresh and green, but the soft light and the drops of water from the light rain intensified the colors and made the light less harsh.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: season

Autumn Tamarisk

Spring Trees, Yosemite Valley

Dogwood Leaves, Spring

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