Tag Archives: snow

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

Snow Geese, Sunset

May 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Snow geese in flight at sunset, Sacramento Valley

I made this in the last moments of an early March visit to the California Central Valley to photograph migratory birds. (As I write this in late March, I’m pretty certain that this was the final “goose chase” of this winter season.) I had come across a very large flock of snow geese in a field alongside a road south of Sacramento near the end of the day – somewhat to my surprise – so I pulled over on the barely adequate shoulder of the road and photographed over a fence and some roadside weeds as the birds began to fly off in small groups.

This little episode illustrates, for me, some of the unpredictability and luck involved in photographing such birds. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of having appropriate equipment and knowing how to use it, nor of having some idea of where to find the birds. But there is a lot about this that is not in the photographer’s control. I had started the day many miles south of here before dawn at a very different wildlife site. My plans were a bit vague beyond starting there, and when the opportunities seemed a bit less than idea after the morning shoot, I decided that I would use the “blah light” midday hours to travel up the valley a good distance to another area where I had not photographed since last season. (This added bit of driving also allowed me to investigate a few highways and side roads that I had been wanting to check out.) After a long drive of nearly two hours I arrived at this location in the Sacramento area and found… not at all what I had hoped for. I was hoping for more large flocks of birds, preferably geese and/or cranes, but at the first place I stopped it seemed that formerly flooded fields had now been drained and tilled. I moved to another area, but still couldn’t see what I had in mind to shoot. I drove around a bit trying to get the lay of the land and discover if perhaps the birds were somewhere other than where I expected to find them, but aside from a few small groups I didn’t find much. I took a nap. I started the usual contemplation about how not every shoot is successful and reminded myself that it was a good day even if nothing turned up here. As sunset approached I decided to make one last loop around the area, stopping to briefly photograph a few Canadian geese. As I watched the, I caught a glimpse of the tell-tale white birds off to the north and since I wasn’t finding anything all the compelling where I was I drove off in that direction. I soon was surprised to find a field filled with many thousands of geese – and a bit more surprised to find that they (or at least many of them) were snow geese rather than the Ross’s geese I often photograph. I stood along the road, separated from them by a low fence and tall weeds and watched. Before long small groups began to take of and fly low angle paths across the field toward the setting sun. The light was beautiful but often they were in front of farmland buildings, trees, and wires. I kept shooting and occasionally a group would rise high enough and quickly enough to appear against early evening sky. One of the important factors, or at least it seems to me, is to capture the group when the birds are in a pleasing and interesting configuration. Too often they overlap, or may not have wings raised or lowered, or there distances may vary enough to create focus problems – so it is no surprise that a good percentage of the shots aren’t keepers. (I have a sense of when this is more likely to work, but only a sense.) But this group managed to cooperate nicely, not only flying against background of clear sky, heading into the golden hour sunset light, but also managing to maintain enough separation that none of them overlap at all.

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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees on Granite Ridge

May 23, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rugged trees growing along the top of a glaciated granite ridge, Yosemite National Park

I made this photograph on my first visit of the season to the Tioga Pass area of the Yosemite National Park high country. I managed to be there on the first and second open days. This was an unusual though perhaps not unprecedented sort of opening, in that there was a record low amount of snow in the Sierra as the warm season began, and this was the second of two back-to-back low-snowfall winters. This season was an odd one. I was in the Sierra back in early fall and it seemed like we might actually have an early and wet winter. Certainly things played out that way through the end of 2012 – but then the tap was shut off and there was precious little precipitation at all during the first part of 2013. As you can see in the photograph, there was still some snow around, but it looked more like late June or even early July of a more typical year.

The photograph was made near a very popular location along Tioga Pass Road, though I walked more or less the opposite direction from the objects of everyone else’s interest to find a vantage point that let me photograph back across this granite ridge, littered with glacial erratic boulders and the debris from exfoliation, and supporting a few trees. The morning light slanted in from behind the ridge and the trees and left a bluish haze between this ridge and the even larger granite ridge across a deep valley.

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

Morning Haze, Death Valley

March 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Distant snow-covered peaks are barely visible across the vast space of Death Valley in hazy morning light

This photograph was made from Dantes View, high in the mountains along the eastern border of Death Valley itself, and with a commanding, panoramic view of a huge portion of the surrounding terrain and especially down into Death Valley and the Badwater area almost right beneath the peak. The view here looks roughly north or northwest, past the location of Furnace Creek and beyond the Mesquite Dunes area to the far northern end of the Valley and then beyond to distant snow-covered peaks.

I have written before that Dantes View has been a difficult place for me to photograph. At first glance, the location has a lot going for it. At about a mile above the Valley floor below, the views encompass a huge area of interesting terrain, ranging from the lowest reaches of Death Valley itself to the 11,000+” Telescope in the Panamint Range to other features so distant that they often fade into the haze. But for me these same features make it very difficult to pick out anything that can draw the larger components of the scene together. There have been times when I have gone there with the intention of photographing, gotten out, looked around, been impressed by the location, and made no photographs at all. This time I mostly shot details of the Valley using a very long lens, but I thought that the shadows of the passing clouds brought enough relieve to the uniformity of the Valley to make this photograph, which I hope conveys some sense of the scale of the place.

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

Winter Oaks, Morning Mist

February 25, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning mist swirls around Glacier Point beyond the silhouetted branches of winter oak trees, Yosemite Valley.

This morning proved – yet again – that there is “always something to see” if I’m just out there looking. We had stayed overnight in The Valley the night before, following the opening reception for Yosemite Renaissance 28, the annual juried exhibit of work created by artists inspired by and working in and around Yosemite National Park. (It is a wonderful show and you should stop by the Museum Gallery in the Valley if you are in the Valley during the next few months.) After heading out for a late dinner with a group of other participants after the reception, we got to bed quite late and the idea of waking up well before dawn to photograph was not sounding as appealing as it sometimes can. It didn’t help that the weather forecast was for clouds and a chance of rain or snow.

I woke up at 5:30 and reset my alarm for the relatively late hour of 6:30, thinking that whatever photography there might be would be almost outside my door and realizing that sunrise would not be until after 7:00 a.m. I got up, quickly dressed and grabbed camera gear, headed out the door and started walking. In the pre-dawn light I could see that the clear areas of the sky were quickly diminishing and that clouds were ringing the Valley. I ended up in nearly deserted Cooks Meadow, where I made a few photographs of trees and cliffs and so forth. Then it started to rain lightly. I kept shooting a bit longer, but soon realized that I couldn’t really stay out there since I had not thought to bring anything waterproof for me or my gear. I retreated to a nearby shuttle bus stop and found shelter under its roof. Now of all the places to look for aesthetic inspiration in the Sierra, a Yosemite Valley shuttle stop might be very close to the least likely. However, finding myself in one and with nothing else to do, I began to look around to see what I could see from this small sheltered area. First I noticed a large granite face to my east that was becoming reflective in the light rain, and I shot a few photographs in that direction. Then I looked up through the branches of dormant oak trees toward Glacier Point and saw clouds swirling about it and nearby pinnacles and trees, occasionally broken enough to allow some of the sunrise light to create a glow behind the mist. And there you have it – the first photograph I have made from under the roof of a shuttle stop… ;-)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: snow

Snow Geese, Sunset

Trees on Granite Ridge

Winter Oaks, Morning Mist

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