Tag Archives: white

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

White-Faced Ibis

March 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

White-Faced Ibis feeding in San Joaquin Valley wetlands

As I have pointed out in the past, I’m no bird expert – but I do like to photograph them! For some reason the white-faced ibis has intrigued me for some time. The first time I photographed them it was an accident. I was photographing birds flying overhead on one winter morning when the sky was filled with birds – so many that I mostly just photographed without paying too much attention to the specifics of what I was seeing. Sometime later when I got home and looked at the files I saw that one large group of birds flying in a long row, silhouetted against the brighter sky, had the interesting curved bills that characterize the ibises.

More recently I have learned to look for them, and in some of the places I photograph I now know where to find them, down to the acre in a few cases. In mid-February I went to one of these locations and ended up at a spot where I have seen many of them in the past, often feeding in groups. But this time I saw exactly two. One was behind some reeds and did not make a good photographic subject, but this one was feeding alongside a gravel road right at the edge of the water. I stopped my car – which often serves as an effective blind – and opened a window and waited (somewhat) patiently as the bird worked its way along in the shallow water. The trick is to think of this almost as a portrait – I watch for the bird to turn into the best light, to stand in an interesting position, to face the camera, and to be in a spot that avoids distracting or interfering objects. The egret tends to spend a lot of its time with its beak deep in the water as it looks for food – not a very attractive photographic pose! But it periodically lifts the beak and every so often it briefly stands up straight as seen here. The plumage of this bird is very interesting. It can look just plain dull and almost black in some light. But if it turns its body toward the sun, the feathers become iridescent and have tints of green and red.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Beach and Rocks, Pacific Ocean

January 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The incoming swell stretches toward that distant horizon beyond a few rocks on an Oregon beach

As we drove south along the Oregon coast in August we passed through Port Oxford. Just below this town the highway briefly curved landward before heading south again, traveling along the edge of a long and wide beach featuring impressive sea stacks and long strings of waves coming in off of the Pacific. I found a spot with a few dark, back-lit rocks to break up the uniformity of the horizontal lines of beach, surf, horizon, and sky, and shot straight toward the sun and its brilliant reflections on the surface of the ocean.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Austria, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Windows and Stucco Walls

December 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Tall stucco buildings with almost uniform white-framed windows line a narrow Salzburg, Austria street

Yes, another photograph of windows and walls along narrow back-streets in Salzburg Austria… In the late afternoon, the sun had dropped low enough that no direct light was making its way down into the canyons of these narrow streets except where the streets were pointing directly toward the sun. These buildings were a long a section where the street curved – the streets here are apparently so old that they do not follow the geometric logic of more modern cities. Along the curve the fronts of building are, obviously, going to be at slight angles to one another. Here, that bit of non-linearity, plus the converging perspective lines from the upward-pointing camera position, seemed to create a sort of off-kilter effect.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: England, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Walls and Windows

November 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Brick walls and windows along a London street, late afternoon

There is probably not a whole lot to write about this photograph. As we walked some London streets that were not quite as filled with tourists, I looked up this side street and saw the beautiful series of brick walls, with all sorts of interesting interruptions of the basic form: windows, an indented darker area housing windows, conduit and a lamp, etc. Between the darker bricks further along the wall and the shadow near the camera position, there was a brighter band of sunlit bricks.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: white

White-Faced Ibis

Beach and Rocks, Pacific Ocean

Windows and Stucco Walls

Brick Walls and Windows

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