Tag Archives: usa north

Yellow Tulip

Image March 27, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

And suddenly it is spring. We never get what most people would think of as “real winter” here in my part of California, but the change from our mild winter to spring is still obvious and striking. For more than a month the hills have been turning green, and more recently flowers have begun to blossom, in gardens and in the wild.

I photographed this yellow tulip on a visit on a local garden earlier this week. My preference is to photograph these flowers in soft, shaded light, so we went early in the morning and we sought out flowers in shady locations.

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.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Levee Road, Winter

Image February 23, 2025 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Photo: gravel road along a levee in California's Central Valley. — “Levee Road, Winter” — A gravel levee road winds through California Central Valley wetlands.

Driving through California’s Great Central Valley, you might think that the place consists of freeways, scattered towns, and distant views. These are port of the experience, but if you get off of the Interstates and poke around in more rural areas you find a very different world. Here we were following a gravel road along a flood control levee on on an early-winter morning.

Roads like this are all over the Central Valley. In the wetter areas they follow levees, but elsewhere they might track along property lines. When I made the photograph a weather front was passing nearby, and the sky was full of impressive clouds.

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” from Heyday Books, is available directly from G Dan Mitchell.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Oak Tree, Sun and Fog

Image January 29, 2025 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This is the third and final photograph from my recent local “foggy morning” photography. To recap, when low fog stuck around here for hours (it usually dissipates very early) I headed out to the local rural landscape to make some photographs. This tree is in an area south of San Jose that was once destined to be a technology park. There’s a lot of history there, but the short story is that after the local government gave in to developer pressure there were no takers for the technology park. Today it remains relatively rural and is increasingly protected. I’d call that a victory!

The tree is on private land, from what I can tell, though clearly visible from a nearby roadway. The hills in the background form a low ridge that roughly parallels the edge of the valley for miles. At the moment I made the photograph the tree was out of the fog, but it was just thinning in the hills, and beautiful slanted columns of light formed between the shadows of trees.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

Scroll down to share comments or questions. (Click post title first if viewing on the home page.)

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Evening Aspens

Image November 23, 2024 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I confess to often looking for the most intensely colorful aspen groves and visiting them when the light most enhances that intensity. Often this means positioning the trees between me and the sun, as back-light can make the leaves glow with unbelievable intensity. But that is obviously not the only way to photograph beautiful fall color, and something more subtle gets my attention, too. In fact, I love photographing these trees in the shade, where the colors may be a bit less intense, but where soft light fills the shadows and reveals details.

I began photographing in this area in the late afternoon when the sun was, in fact, back-lighting the trees. But in this particular location the sun drops behind higher peaks well before sunset, and shadows fall across the landscape. So I continued photographing as the light softened and eventually began to fade.