Tag Archives: sunset

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Beach and Bluffs, Evening

August 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light and fog along the Pacific coast north of Santa Cruz, California

On day two of my “return to California photography” we drove across the coastal mountains to the Pacific Coast Highway north of Santa Cruz, California looking for some combination of evening golden hour (or even blue hour, but that’s a different photograph) light, incoming coastal fog, beach, bluffs, and ocean. This area is, of course, pretty familiar to me at this point, so we hit a few of my favorites: a small beach on a side road where wind surfers congregate, a place where a creek comes down to the ocean from the coastal hills, a particular bluff where I know that gulls and pelicans will often fly past very close, another beach where the pelicans often stop to rest, and more.

This beach is at one of the low spots along this highway, which often alternates between climbing to the tops of the bluffs and descending to beaches at major river and creek valleys. On previous visits I have caught a glimpse of this particular angle of view, which only appears momentarily along a section of the road with no real turnouts. I have stopped before, admired the line of bluffs extending north along the coast, but mostly not managed to make a photograph that I like. So as we passed this spot again I looked again… and liked what I saw – soft, warm golden hour light gently lighting the atmosphere thick with moisture from the incoming fog and nicely shaped waves running up on the beach as those bluffs faded into the distant mist.

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

Ross’s Geese, Late November Fly-In

July 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese settling in for the night at last sunset light, San Joaquin Valley, California.

Now that I have finally (it was about time!) discovered the migratory bird populations in the Central Valley of California, I’ve become addicted to photographing them. Among my favorites are the huge flocks of Ross’s geese that can appear at times in certain places out there, and which are most active during the morning “fly out” and the evening” fly in” periods.

This was my first “wild goose chase” of the current season, and I had arrived very early that morning… to find thick tule fog obscuring the views of the birds. Early in the morning, I could hear them but barely see them at all, with the exception of one flock settled in close enough to the access road that I could barely make out a few of them in the murk. As things cleared a bit in the morning I could confirm that there were decent numbers of these birds about, but they seemed to be settled in on water that was inaccessible to me for photography. I photographed some other subjects, and eventually moved on to check out some other areas. Late in the day, I realized that I probably had time to swing back through the refuge for about an hour in the evening. When I arrived I found a few birds in the same inaccessible location where I had seen them in the morning, but I also was able to see some flocks passing by and even circling over along the far corner of the area. With this in mind, I began to work my way over there, and was rewarded with a good-sized flock that had settled into a grassy area not too far from the access road. As these geese will do, from time to time they spontaneously all rose into the air and the giant, thick flock circled for a few minutes before settling back in more or less where they were before. I photographed these against the dusk sky about the Coast Range as the last of them came back to rejoin the group on the ground.

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

Geese, Sunset Clouds

July 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of geese passes above sunset-lit clouds over northern California

I made this photograph on what turned out to be, no surprise to me, my last migratory bird photography day of this season. (And a productive season it was!) In April the climate begins to shift strongly toward spring conditions in California and in this drought year that meant that not only did it warm up, but places that might otherwise remain wet were already drying out. I started the day at a wildlife refuge where I frequently photograph the birds, especially Ross’s Geese, and was fortunate to begin the day with some classic light Central Valley fog that gradually cleared as the morning wore on. After shooting for a few hours I came to that midday time when migratory bird photography isn’t as great as it is at the edges of the day – a time when one might think about how to kill the next few hours until the light again becomes conducive to photography. I spontaneously decided to not spend it waiting here but to instead drive a good distance north to another place I’ve photographed in the past but which I hadn’t visited this season.

I took my time on this long drive. The route itself requires more than an hour of driving, but a few side excursions added considerably to that. I pulled off the highway to investigate one small town that I hadn’t been through before, and I drive a ways up a side road that crosses the Diablo Range heading west, finding the green spring grasses and some early wildflowers. Back on the main highway, I continued north to an areas where I have photographed cranes and other birds in the past, but in this dry year all of the water was gone and agriculture work seemed to already be underway. I decided to try another wildlife reserve that isn’t far away, and it turned out to still be relatively wet – but the large flocks of birds that I could count on back where I started my day seemed to not be here. I continued my search, eventually spotting the tell-tale white “cloud” that could only mean that a flock of geese was busy in a field a ways to the north, so I quickly drove over there to find a very large flock of snow geese, which I don’t generally see further south. After sunset, this flock of geese flew high overhead in the waning twilight.

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

Six Ross’s Geese in Flight

June 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small flock of six Ross’s geese in flight against the sky in golden hour light, San Joaquin Valley, California

Late on this January afternoon – more like early evening perhaps – we were staking out a small flock of Ross’s geese that had parked themselves in a nearby pond. There were not that many of them – nothing like the flocks of many thousands that we have watched on some other evenings, when they gradually depart in small groups over a long period of time, or the very large group we saw earlier this year that mostly just moved around in a pasture near where we were shooting. Each time a small sub group departed on this evening, they created a noticeable decline in the number of birds left behind.

However, they somewhat compensated for their small numbers by means of their more “photographable” departure path, at least in some cases. Rather than flying away from us, some instead flew from left to right in front of our position and some of them even did a few laps overhead before actually leaving. This group of six was among those most obliging geese. They had departed to the right, looped back around to the left, and then flew across in front of us a second time, all the while taking a fairly low flight path. As this group passed by I watched carefully though the viewfinder to try to catch them in an instant when none of them obscured the others in the flock, and I caught such a moment here with the added bonus of a bit of slightly golden late afternoon light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sunset

Beach and Bluffs, Evening

Ross’s Geese, Late November Fly-In

Geese, Sunset Clouds

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