Tag Archives: valley

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Birds, Trees, Ponds – California Central Valley

March 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Migratory birds fly over a group of trees at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge as others congregate in a pond.

In my continuing mission to share as many photographs of this little grove of trees in as many ways as possible, I now present – The Trees In Black and White… ;-) I have shot this little group on two successive weeks now, and I’m starting to almost regard them as personal friends. They are located out along the “auto tour” route at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge in California’s Central Valley. From certain angles late in the day they stand in front of a beautiful, luminous glowing sky as the sun moves to the west.

I made this photograph in the early evening, before the golden hour light. Due to these lighting conditions and the typical characteristics of the Valley at this time of year, there was a great deal of atmospheric haze. While later light would reveal the ridge of the coast range in the distance, at this time the glowing haze blocked that view, and its effect can even be seen on the trees along the far levee. As large flocks of birds flew by – I think they were geese – they would pass behind and above the trees. Often they were in odd positions – too low to be visible behind the trees or so high that I would have had to expand the angle of view more than I wanted. But patience helps. I figure that eventually some birds will almost always fly past in the more or less right position, and here a lower string of birds was accompanied by a few flying higher. As I often do with this sort of subject, I compose a landscape around a combination of what I do see (the foreground water and birds, the levees, the trees) and what I imagine I might see if I’m lucky (birds occupying the space on either side and above the trees). Then I wait. I recall pressing the shutter release when the central three birds were centered above the tallest trees.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest

March 4, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Layers of terrain including Owens Valley sagebrush, the Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest including Basin Mountain, Mount Humphreys, and Mount Emerson.

In some ways this is a very typical eastern Sierra Nevada scene but in others, some of which might not be immediately obvious, it is atypical. I made the photograph while on my way to Death Valley in early January 2012. I had done the long drive over Tioga Pass (a first hint about the “unusual” issue) and was headed south to where I would turn east to cross the Inyo Range to that park. As I descended the long grade from Tom’s Place toward Bishop I passed through familiar Round Valley, but this little scene of sagebrush, Sierra foothills, and the crest caught my attention so I quickly stopped and made a few photographs.

The first and primary unusual thing about this photograph is that this was January! In a typical January the peaks here would be completely buried in winter snows – but this January the snowpack brought to mind mid-July. Although the season had started with early and heavy snows in October, things came to an abrupt halt and at this point it had been a month since real snow had fallen. A second slightly unusual thing is that I made this photograph in the mid-afternoon time frame. This is not a time typically regarded as being conducive to landscape photography. However, the high backlight was making the bluish haze more visible and the light was softened a bit by the high clouds, so I went ahead and made a photograph that, I hope, captures the somewhat harsh and dry conditions of the area and the season.

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

Ross’s Geese Take Flight, Dusk

March 3, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of Ross’s geese take flight at dusk above a Central Valley pond, California.

Yes, another photograph of geese taking flight above a California Central Valley pond. I can’t help myself! :-) After photographing the dwindling flock, as they left in large groups during the hour before sunset, at the point of most beautiful light there were only a few left. This group was among the very last to depart from this pond, and at this point it was dusk and the colors had gone from the crisp blues of an hour earlier to warm pinks and reds and purples. We were lucky enough to be very close to this large flock for at least an hour.

I’ll use this photograph to make another technical observation. I made what might seem like an odd choice regarding exposure for this shot. Here I wanted to try to stop the motion of the birds as they lifted off. (In other photographs of this subject I intentionally allow the motion to blur.) This meant that I needed a relatively short shutter speed. Even after raising the ISO to 400 and opening up the largest aperture on this long lens, the result was still going to be underexposure. for what I had in mind for this sequence of shots, I wanted to avoid using an ultra-high ISO with the attendant increase in noise. So I chose to deliberately underexpose these shots by perhaps a couple of stops, trusting that I’d be able to compensate for this in post since I shoot in raw mode. In other words, if you are the sort who scans EXIF data for exposure information and then tries to make sense out of it or even use it yourself… you have been warned! :-)

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Rhyolite Ghost Casino

February 28, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The “Rhyollite Ghost Casino” was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada.

This building in the ghost town of Rhyolite was originally a (very expensive) railway station that was abandoned when the town itself was abandoned after the nearby mines ran out of profitable ore in the early 1900s. According to several sources I have read, the building was then turned into a bar and casino, and many years later was for a time a curio shop and museum. Today it is boarded up and behind cyclone fences – more off-limits than almost any other structure in the ghost town.

I would live to get beyond the fencing and photograph this building more closely. It looks, in some ways, surprisingly modern for something that was constructing in the middle of nowhere about a century ago, and there are a number of interesting elements in the architecture. (I have photographed some of them, and eventually I’ll perhaps post a few.) The green sign on the front of the building appears to be a repurposed sign from the railroad station days. Underneath the fading “Rhyolite Ghost Casino” lettering, barely readable in this photograph, is and older sign declaring in larger print, “Rhyolite.” A walk around the structure reveals other interesting details, including one area that looks like it might have been a booth for a fortune-teller.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: valley

Birds, Trees, Ponds – California Central Valley

Tungsten Hills, Buttermilk Country, and the Sierra Crest

Rhyolite Ghost Casino

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