Tag Archives: tree

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

Wetlands Tree, Evening

January 16, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A last beam of evening light illuminates a lone tree in San Joaquin Valley wetlands

My recollection of this early winter, late December day in the San Joaquin Valley is that it was mostly a foggy and gray day, with direct light being quite rare. I’m usually fine with that, since the fog is certainly a strong element in the character of the place at this time of the year and because I like photographing in cloudy, foggy, and misty conditions. (Gray is another story… ;-) On a day like this, while I’m happy to see some glow through the clouds and fog, I’m also often just fine with conditions that some might regard as boring.

Sometimes, even on a gray day, there are surprises. We had photographed all morning, taken a brief break away from here to grab some lunch, and then returned to photograph in the middle afternoon and on into the evening. For the most part, the combination of some fog and high clouds kept things fairly “atmospheric” for the rest of the day. But not long before sunset there was one of these “surprises.” To be honest, when I am watching the conditions carefully and predicting where they might lead, there are less likely to be literal surprises. Perhaps they are better described as positive evolutions of potential conditions. In this case, even though it was cloudy and gray, I had my eyes on the possibility that the sun might briefly shine through a gap along the horizon just before sunset. And that is exactly what happened! For a brief span of a few minutes the light gradually warmed and intensified, starting almost imperceptibly but soon becoming quite obvious. As this happened I move quickly to this nearby spot where I had photographed this tree many times before and therefore knew that it could be my central subject, standing out in the warm light against the flat valley marshes and flatland extending into the distance.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Juniper, Boulder, Cliff

January 12, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small juniper tree grows next to a sandstone boulder at the bottom of a cliff, Capitol Reef National Park

I’m digging back into the October Utah photographs yet again for this one. It comes from Capitol Reef National Park, where I spent about three days out of a longer visit to Utah. I started in far southwest Utah, wandered a bit in the Vermillion Cliffs area, followed a back road north to highway 12, then headed over Boulder Mountain to the Park, where I met a friend and got a campsite for a few days.

I’m gradually pushing out the boundaries of my knowledge of this park, and part of that growth on this trip involved shooting in some tricky light. On this late afternoon, between some other subjects, we ended up in a well-traveled canyon as the tall canyon walls and some cloudiness softened the light. After reaching our furthest point in the canyon we turned around and started back, and as we passed back through one twisting section we saw several interesting photographic possibilities, stopped, and spent a bit of time looking and photographing. This small juniper tree stood in front of an old red rock boulder, and the green of the tree and red of the rock complemented one another. I was also fascinated by the complex, angled, and sometimes-curving patterns on the vertical cliff wall in the background.

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

Geese, Tree, Dusk

January 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese fly low past a tree at dusk, San Joaquin Valley

A small group of photographer friends spent (for the third year in a row) New Year’s Day in California’s San Joaquin Valley, greeting the dawn of 2015 by photographing it! Dawn wasn’t the only attraction — we are also drawn here by the landscape, the incredible wildlife (geese, cranes, egrets, herons, ibises, pelicans, and much more), and the beautiful winter light in this part of California. We began our day in the pre-dawn soft and foggy light and ended it in post-dust light when it finally became to dark to photograph.

For me this simple photograph of a field, a tree, and some geese evokes many of the things that draw me back to this landscape every winter. Even on a day when the tule fog thins, the atmosphere rarely seems to fully clear, and the dusk light is soft and mysterious and full of colors. And at this hour the geese seem to be settling in for the evening, often collecting in large groups in fields of ponds. As they do, they often seem to fly low between groups, flowing across the still landscape and between trees like the wind itself or like the flow of water.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Mount Humphreys, Dawn

January 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This photograph is from a spectacular landscape in the eastern Sierra above the town of Bishop, in what is sometimes called “Buttermilk Country,” or just plain “the Buttermilks.” Here the land rises steadily from the Owens Valley lowlands, first gradually, then building into the eroded and rounded rocky hills like those catching the sun in the center of this photograph, and finally culminating in the alpine peaks of the Sierra Nevada Crest. The tallest peak in the photograph is Mount Humphreys.

As is typical in autumn, I was in the eastern Sierra to photograph fall color — which mostly means aspens. My recollection is that we started up toward the mountains from Bishop very early in the morning, before sunrise, and then decided that the dawn light on the eastern face of the Sierra offered more possibilities than yet more aspen photographs — besides, the aspens would still be there after this sunrise light was gone! We left the main road and followed gravel tracks to this spot with its view of foreground hills and Sierra crest peaks just as the dawn light show began.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: tree

Wetlands Tree, Evening

Juniper, Boulder, Cliff

Geese, Tree, Dusk

Mount Humphreys, Dawn

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