Tag Archives: water

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Winter Marsh

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Winter Marsh
Skeletal trees and dormant grasses in a winter San Joaquin Valley marsh

Winter Marsh. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Skeletal trees and dormant grasses in a winter marsh

We celebrated New Year’s Day as we have for the past few years — meeting before dawn a group of friends and photographers out in the wintry California Central Valley to greet the literal dawn of the new year. We arrived before sunrise, spent the first few hours making photographs, then gathered for a morning champagne toast and shared snacks and stories. After lunch we went back into the field to photograph birds and the landscape until it was so dark that we could barely see one another by the light of the rising full moon. Great times!

While most of my photography on such trips and in such places at this time of year involves birds, occasionally I photograph other things in this valley. During the late morning hours we all felt that need for a walking break. (Most bird photography involves a lot of standing and sitting around.) We wandered out on a trail through a marsh, I got started a bit later than the group. I took only a small, handheld camera with a single lens, not thinking there would be much to photograph. But it was quiet, a gentle breeze moved the grasses, and soft light shone through the hazy atmosphere, so I stopped to make a few photographs of this peaceful and almost silent landscape of trees, grasses, and water.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Tule Fog, Autumn Trees

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Geese, Tule Fog, Autumn Trees
Migratory snow geese and Ross’s geese in a pond on a foggy San Joaquin Valley morning

Geese, Tule Fog, Autumn Trees. San Joaquin Valley, California. December 1, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Migratory snow geese and Ross’s geese in a pond on a foggy San Joaquin Valley morning

Since it was December 1, it seemed like time to start my annual series of visits to California’s Great Central Valley to photograph migratory birds and the landscape of the place. (Actually, I had made one preliminary and very quick visit about a month earlier, but too early for the birds shown in this photograph.) There is a ritual about these visits which, for me, are typically one-day affairs that start very early and end rather late, with a fair amount of driving involved. Up well before dawn, I drive a couple of hours in darkness and often fog, arriving perhaps a half hour before dawn to the stirring sound of many thousands of birds, already awake at morning twilight. I photograph intensively for at least a few hours before taking, at last on most days, a midday break. By mid-afternoon I’m back at work again, photographing through the peak of the visual crescendo just before sunset and then continuing for perhaps another half hour or so until the light is gone. I pack, get into my vehicle, and retrace my two-hour drive back home. (At least the shorter daylight hours of this season allow me to get up a little bit “later” — if you consider 3:45 or 4:00 AM later — and return home in time for a late dinner.)

On this first day of December it was incredibly foggy when I arrived — so much so that it was really hard to make photographs. I usually enjoy photographing in the fog, but this was so thick that almost no sunrise light managed to color the gloom. But before long the light began to come through the fog and eventually I found a moderately large group of white geese settled in on a pond. Among them I saw Ross’s and snow geese, and beyond them there were trees with fall foliage.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Abstract, Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco

A Reflection

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A Reflection
Reflecting patterns

I think this photograph is more fun if I avoid saying too much about it. I will say that it actually is a photograph, and one with no more post processing work than I might apply in, say, a landscape photograph. I made the photograph while out on the street in San Francisco earlier this week, doing night photography with my friends and fellow photographers of Studio Nocturne SF.

And that’s all I’m going to write…

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

White-Faced Ibis

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White-Faced Ibis
White-faced ibis wading in shallow water

White-Faced Ibis. San Joaquin Valley, California. December 1, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

White-faced ibis wading in shallow water

Late each fall I begin heading out into California’s Great Central Valley to photograph migratory birds and the winter (plus a bit of autumn) landscape of this place. That landscape is largely agricultural, but Americans had enough foresight in the past — and one hopes we’ll return to those roots again soon — to put aside many areas in this midst of these areas for the use of birds, largely migratory birds who spend their summers thousand of miles to the north and then magically appear in my neighborhood during the colder months. Here, under the Central Valley’s open sky (often obscured by tule fog at this time of year!) I find cranes, herons, ibises, geese, egrets, hawks, eagles, and more.

Yesterday I made my first real bird photography foray of the new season. As usual, I was up and on the road many hours before dawn, arriving at my destination a half hour before sunrise to find the place socked in by tule fog so thick that bird photography wasn’t really possible at first. I took my time, slowing down to synchronize with the less-hectic flow of time here, and a bit later in the day came upon a group of ibises feeding near the edge of a pond. The coloration of ibises used to confuse me. Guides show everything from nearly black to quite colorful, but the first time I saw these birds they looked dark and, to be honest, somewhat drab. However, as this photograph shows, in the right light their feathers can produce a wild array of color including red, blue, green, yellow and more.

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 and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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