Tag Archives: sun

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

Wetland Sunrise, Fog

March 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter sun rises through high clouds above foggy wetland landscape, San Joaquin Valley

I photographed this Central Valley sunrise on a cold and damp mid-February morning earlier this year. I had travelled out here to photograph birds, but that is always a bit of an excuse to photograph landscapes, too. The San Joaquin Valley, especially on winter days when varying amounts of fog come into play, can be a beautiful place to make photographs—which may surprise people who mostly think of it as the location of California’s agribusinesses and a place to drive through quickly on hot summer days.

Many things come together in a place like this at a time like this. High, thin clouds were spread over the Sierra Nevada far to the east, and the sun had to rise above them before it appeared out here in the valley. (The sun had earlier colored the landscape as it struck high clouds over the valley, but it was not visible yet itself.) Many of the birds here only visit in the winter, arriving from and then departing for places far north of here. The marshes in this area mark the location of the San Joaquin River drainage, though today there is almost nothing left of the original water flow. And on a morning like this the experience is only partially visual. The air is cold, damp, and still, yet filled with the astonishing and raucous sounds of tens of thousands of birds.

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

Two Cranes, Sunrise

February 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Two cranes fly in front the rising sun above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

On New Years Eve 2013 I arrived back in the San Francisco Bay Area from New York after 10:00 PM. 8 hours later (2 hours of unpacking, four hours of sleep, and two hours of driving) I was in the Central Valley, where I met friends to greet the (literal) dawn of 2014 in the company of wild birds. We arrived before sunrise to find light fog drifting about and to hear the sounds of thousands of birds coming from every direction.

We made a few initial photographs before dawn from very close to our meeting location, and then we headed out into this wildlife area to find locations from which the birds (geese, cranes, herons, pelicans, and more) would be more visible. A few minutes later I looked over my left shoulder to see the very first sliver of the sun barely glowing through the layers of fog as cranes and other birds flew across the horizon above the marshland. I quickly found this spot where there was a small tree and where a bit of the further water was visible and I photographed though the sunrise, until the sun rose above the low mist and became to bright to include in the frame. There was a constant flow of birds across the scene – sometimes hundreds of them and sometimes, as in this scene, only a few.

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

Marsh, Fog, Sunrise

February 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Dawn sun reflected in the surface of a foggy San Joaquin Valley marsh

On a foggy morning like this one, when the fog is dense but not deep, the atmosphere and light can pass through an astounding series of phases in short order as the day begins. We arrived before sunrise, when it was still almost dark, and when we began to think photographically a few minutes later there was little light in the sky at all. The overall toned were mostly blue, and it was difficult to see any detail. Very soon, as the first real pre-dawn light began to illuminate clouds above the eastern horizon and turn them shades of red and pink, the shallow fog layer began to glow with these reflected colors. We had perhaps five minutes of this luminous color, which at times was almost unbelievably saturated, and then the intensity began to fade and the colors became more subtle. At the same time, the brighter sky overhead became more visible through the fog, and we could begin to more clearly see the higher clouds.

The sun was still below the horizon, even though its light was beginning to strike those higher clouds to the east. At about this time we moved on to a different location with a clearer view directly to the east. Very soon the rising sun began to emerge above the distant Sierra and low clouds, and from our position it rose into a slight clearing in these clouds. The orb of the sun became visible through the dense atmosphere and its direct light soon began to reflect off the surface of the wetland pond in front of us. Shooting straight into the rising sun, I closed down aperture and shortened exposure and made this photograph that, to me, captures the depth of the scene as it moves from the nearby reflections and ripples in the water, across a further line of half-submerged grasses, towards a larger expanse of the pond and then further landscape in fog, to finally rise though slightly glowing back-lit fog toward the sky and the sun.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Sun on Rocky Peninsula

February 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sun strikes a rocky peninsula in a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake, Kings Canyon National Park

This is another photograph from last September’s nine-day photography sojourn into the high Sierra backcountry of Kings Canyon National Park with three photographer friends. We traveled to a remote 11,000′ basin, where we set up camp and photographed for nearly a week, coming to intimately know the surrounding landscape of lakes, streams, granite, trees, and the changing conditions of atmosphere and light which varied with the weather and the time of day. By spending time in such a place you have the opportunity to look beyond the first impressions of towering granite peaks and immense vistas and to begin to seem more of the smaller details that form the fabric this high country world.

On one of my morning walks in the surrounding terrain I visited a nearby basin full of lakes ranging in size from tiny pools and tarns to quite large lakes filling the basins scooped out by ancient glaciers. This basin is almost surrounded by nearby tall peaks and ridges, though it is open to the north-east as well. Due to these high walls, the sun does not penetrate down to its lowest levels at sunrise, but instead shows up over an extended period as the sun tops nearby ridges and the sun-shadow line traverses the valley. This portion of the lake in the photograph lies against more or less the south side of the valley, where a large and rocky slope ascends toward a ridge that shades the area much later in the morning. At the moment I made this photograph, the sun had reached the thin peninsula of rock in the foreground but the more distant rocks are illuminated by light reflected from other faces nearby.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sun

Wetland Sunrise, Fog

Two Cranes, Sunrise

Marsh, Fog, Sunrise

Morning Sun on Rocky Peninsula

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