Tag Archives: white

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

Winter Geese, Winter Pond

Image February 24, 2024 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

On the best winter days, migratory birds gather by the hundreds of thousands (millions?) up and down California’s Central Valley, especially where the winter wetland ponds form. I first became vaguely aware of this decades ago on a winter drive up the Sacramento Valley on my way to Washington, when for the first time I saw multitudes of birds in the winter sky. Later a chance comment by a friend led me to a location in the delta where birds gather by thousands. Since then, I’ve been addicted to experiencing and photographing this annual wonder.

I made this photograph on a cloudy morning. The cloud shield overhead extended to the edge of the Sierra, which meant we had a brief but brilliant sunrise above the mountains. Then everything went mostly gray and hazy, and the light turned soft. These geese — largely a mixture of Ross’s, snow, and white-fronted — settled into a pond where I paused.

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.

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

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Two Snow Geese Landing

Image January 15, 2024 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The larger migratory birds often are graceful or powerful in flight, individually or in flocks. But that tends to break down in some ways as they land. They approach the ground, slow to stalling speed, crane necks forward, extend feet downwards, orient their bodies more vertically… and sometimes look downright silly at the last moment. (An exception can be the angle-like uplifted winds of geese in descending groups.) This pair is just at that moment then they transition from flight to landing.

This is a challenging moment to photograph the birds, but knowing a few tings about their behavior can increase your odds. Like airplane pilots, they come around to land facing the wind. If you can position yourself upwind from their likely landing point you get bird faces instead of bird butts. Also, at the last moment they tend to appear in front of distracting backgrounds. Here a larger aperture can blur the background, and looking for backgrounds that don’t include things that you don’t want in your photo — automobiles, buildings, power lines, etc.

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

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Autumn Tree, Brick Wall

Image December 25, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brick wall and an autumn tree, The High Line, Manhattan.

Merry Christmas 2023! This is another photograph in the recent series from Manhattan’s High Line Park, where the subject of partially bare autumn trees juxtaposed with brick walls held my attention. We took a long walk on the High Line on a breezy November day, and we were impressed by the amount of fall color. In truth, there was almost as much as I find in some of the natural areas where I photograph.

One source of interest in these subjects for me is the contrast between the natural and less-than-linear structures of the trees and the backdrop of linear and regular patterns in the brick walls. In each of them I also worked with side-light that highlights the structure of the walls, and I selected trees with just a few remaining autumn leaves.

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Travel

Autumn Leaves, Brick Wall #2

Image December 18, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A nearly bare tree with autumn leaves and a brick wall, High Line Park, Manhattan.

This photograph is another on the theme of end-of-autumn trees and brick walls — of course, in Manhattan. The previous photograph in this series featured a much starker contrast between the dark wall and three white tree trunks. This one is more subtle, with darker and thinner branches that don’t stand out as clearly. This tree has only a few remaining colorful leaves, and I suspect that they, too, were gone soon after I made the photograph.

We tend to think of Manhattan as a purely urban place — and that impression isn’t far off the mark in many ways. But there are bits of the natural world here and there, and sometimes I think that their scarcity and the contrast with the surrounding engineered world makes them more poignant. This photograph comes from our November walk along the High Line Park.