Tag Archives: silhouette

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

Geese, Wetlands, Dusk Sky

February 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese and colorful dusk sky reflected in wetland pond, San Joaquin Valley

This was close to the final photograph I made on my New Year’s Day visit to the San Joaquin Valley. Despite arriving back from the east coast the night before after 10:00 PM, I was determined be out in the valley at a wildlife refuge for the first day of the year. Up hours before dawn, I drove for two hours in the dark and arrived in dawn twilight to find a couple of my friends were already there. We photographed all morning, in light that changed from pre-dawn fog to morning mist to typical winter Central Valley haze, and then we took a break in the early afternoon to go into town and get something to eat.

By this time the light conditions were looking a bit less promising, as high clouds were blocking some of the light, and this combined with the haze to create some very murky conditions. I had more or less decided to call it a day and, in fact, my friends did decide to head back home. Late in the afternoon I was about to do the same thing, but I realized that my route would take me back past the refuge – so I might as well drop in there and see what was up on the way. It was not much more than an hour before sunset when I arrived and it was still quite murky. But I know that there is often a possibility that these conditions can turn colorful when the distant sky is lit but sunset colors. I worked my way around the area to find this very large flock of geese settling in for the evening and, sure enough, the sky lit up during the last few minutes of daylight and into the early evening.

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: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter

January 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The curving driveway at the Cloisters Museum, New York City

We were in New York City during the final week of 2013, visiting family and doing the usual New York things – which, for me, always includes visiting museums and making photographs. We had visited The Cloisters, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but far uptown, on a previous visit – but having not planned very well we arrived on a day when the place was closed! So we only were able to wander around the grounds outside and the surrounding park lands and then down into town below. This time we checked more carefully, and found that not only was it open but that we could use our Metropolitan of Art passes that we used the previous day.

It was a cold day, and when we got off of the long subway ride up from lower Manhattan we were a bit surprised by the wind blowing at Fort Tryon and we didn’t waste too much time in heading over to the museum. I recalled this curving, cobble stone driveway from our previous visit, when we walked up it to get to the front entrance. This time we came from the side and saw it from the top, curving away and toward the barren trees around the museum and cold scene of the city down below the hill in the distance.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Mountains and Valley

January 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Receding desert mountains about the Amargosa Valley, Death Valley National Park

At first look, the general scene here might not have appeared to offer too many photographic opportunities. Although it was still somewhat early in the morning, it was well past the “first light” phase that can make almost any subject look beautiful. There was a great deal of atmospheric haze, and it almost obscured the far mountain ranges. And, as seen in the lower portion of this photograph, while the location is in high and rugged mountains, it is an extremely spare landscape with few plants and only the subtlest of colors from the high desert sage and similar plants.

But, for me, several things were going on here. First, I like haze! Second, a few years ago, after many years of photographing in the Death Valley landscape, I began to look beyond the familiar and more obvious beauties of sunrise and sunset light in dramatic locations in the Valley, and to try to figure out how to photograph more subtle and complex beauties that I encountered at other times and in other locations. I had found myself most often driving through locations like this one, on my way to other places that I presumed would be more interesting. Yet, even though I wasn’t photographing this sort of place, I was having pleasant experiences in them and developing an affinity for them. On one trip it hit me that if I liked being here, there must be some what to make photographs that somehow expressed what it was in these apparently barren places that made me like them. So I stopped here for some time, in a place that might seem like many other places along this route, and I looked around.

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

Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

January 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Flocks of sandhill cranes fly through dawn haze above San Joaquin Valley marshland

This is another New Year’s Day photograph – and probably won’t be the last one. The typical process when I shoot here is to start at a parking area near the entrance before the sun comes up, either meeting friends there or else simply pausing to get my gear ready and put on warm clothes. Without fail, I also pause for a few minutes to take in the extraordinary sound of the many thousands of migratory birds, usually coming from unseen places off in the mist or fog, and the sound always makes me smile. I may make a few initial photographs in the dim predawn light, and then I usually move off to start looking for subjects.

On this morning I began my “move” before the sun came up, but moments later I looked over my shoulder to see the first light of the rising sun, and I quickly found this location with a small gap in the tules, a bare tree, and some reflecting water, and I lined them up with the rising sun. In this foggy valley, when the fog is not too thick, there is a brief interval of perhaps a minute or two when the globe of the sun rises behind the fog, which mutes the light and allows me to shoot straight into the sun. Also right about dawn, flights of sandhill cranes lift off and fly in lines above the landscape – and on this morning the two ephemeral events happened simultaneously.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: silhouette

Geese, Wetlands, Dusk Sky

Driveway, The Cloisters, Winter

Desert Mountains and Valley

Sandhill Cranes, Marsh, Dawn

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