Tag Archives: stand

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.
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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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Color, South Fork Bishop Creek

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Aspen Color, South Fork Bishop Creek
Aspen Color, South Fork Bishop Creek

Aspen Color, South Fork Bishop Creek. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Brilliant peak autumn color in aspen groves along the south fork of Bishop Creek, eastern Sierra Nevada.

One week earlier I had visited this same area only to find a mixture of trees that had lost their leaves during a series of early fall snow storms and trees that were essentially still fully green. What a difference a week made! This fall it seemed that once the color change started, it moved quickly. Not only were these middle elevation trees in full autumn color, but in many places the color extended all the way down to the edge of Owens Valley.

These trees are along the south fork of Bishop Creek, off of the road to South Lake, and not far from so-called “Mist” or “Misty” falls. (I’m skeptical about this waterfall – it gives every appearance of having been constructed by redirecting water to a place where it would not likely flow naturally. I’ll welcome accurate information about that.) Perhaps because these trees grow in a fairly open and wide valley, many of them have managed to grow rather tall and quite straight, in contrast to a number of other Sierra groves that consist of small and often twisted trees. The rows of trees angle up slopes from the creek in the valley bottom and seem to be arranged in diagonal groves that ascend the hillside.

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, Photographs: Wildlife

California Ground Squirrel

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California Ground Squirrel #1
California Ground Squirrel #1

California Ground Squirrel. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. July 21, 2011. Three photographs © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three photographs of a ground squirrel along a shoreline trail at Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

Since I don’t quite think these photographs warrant separate posts, consider this to be my first three-for-one offer on the blog – three photographs in one post! I had taken a break from seascape photography on my recent visit to Point Lobos State Reserve south of Carmel and at the upper limit of what we might think of as the Big Sur coast. I was at the top of a bluff overlooking the “point of the sea wolves,” the actual spot that gives this park its name, and was trying to photograph the rather small number of pelicans that were coming past from time to time. (This was an odd day for photographing pelicans – fortunately that wasn’t the main reason I was at Point Lobos. Ten or fifteen minutes would go by with no pelicans at all… and then a giant flock or 30 or more would cruise by and be gone.)

So, I was parked at a spot along this trail on top of the bluff, waiting for interesting birds to come by when a couple stopped to look, too. As they stood there, this squirrel emerged from the brush and came right up to them – obviously not the wildest wild animal around. (Later I had to chase it off the bench that my camera bag was sitting on.) Since there weren’t any bird in photography range and there was a very close squirrel, and since I was standing there with a 100-400mm zoom on my camera, I figured I might as well get some close up shots for my gallery. This seemingly well-trained squirrel (is there a squirrel modeling school somewhere?) went quickly through a delightful sequence of poses: first all fours on the ground and looking quizzically to my right; then up on hind feet to eat a seed; and finally lowering the paws holding the seed to look ever so cutely at something to the right.)

So, now I have squirrel photographs.

California Ground Squirrel #2
California Ground Squirrel #2
California Ground Squirrel #3
California Ground Squirrel #3

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

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

Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset

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Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset
Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset

Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset. Yosemite National Park, California. June 18, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trees at Olmsted Point are silhouetted against a brilliantly colorful spring sunset sky, Yosemite National Park.

I think everyone should occasionally get to post a just plain gaudy color sunset – and this is mine. While photographing Mount Conness from Olmsted Point was my primary goal on this evening, I also had some opportunities to swing the tripod around and point at other things from time to time. This is about as close as I can come to capturing the nearly hallucinogenic color of the sky as the brightest cloud illumination was centered directly overhead and beginning to move off to the west.

The color saturation was so intense that I had to under expose this by at least a stop in order to avoid blowing out the red channel and in order to retain some differentiation among the various shadings of color as they transitioned from very pink/red through orange and purple and on towards blue.

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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.