Tag Archives: white

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

Egret in Flight

January 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Egret in flight above water at Cosumnes River Wildlife Preserve, California.

I’ve been fascinated by egrets since I first found out about them in a class back in college. Later I discovered that they are quite common in my part of California – back when I was a cyclist riding a few hundred miles every week, often in the country, I discovered that one or more can be found in just about any drainage ditch, slough, or creek bed with water in it during the winter months. More recently I realized – yes, I’m slow about some things! – that they are also found during the winter at places like Point Lobos, where they walk on top of kelp to hunt for small fish.

So I wasn’t the least bit surprised that a couple egrets were the first recognizable birds (to me – I’m no bird expert!) at the Cosumnes River Wildlife Preserve and in the surrounding countryside. Shortly after I crossed the road towards the slough, where many birds are found in the shallow water there, I spotted one alongside a creek bank nearby. I was able to get fairly close to this one and make some photographs as it more or less stood around on the bank doing whatever it is that egrets do. But soon it became uneasy about my presence, even though I was almost completely still and quiet, and it took off for a spot a bit further away. As the bird took flight I panned along with its motion, not paying a lot of attention to anything but the white bird, and I got a short series of photographs as it passed behind some brush alongside the water.

While I can and did make some very sharp photographs of this and other birds standing almost still near the water, I prefer this one with its bird slightly blurred from motion as it flew, and with the out of focus intervening vegetation somewhat interfering with the view of the bird. To me this sort of image better captures the dynamic nature of the bird in low level flight.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Snow Dusted Oaks, El Capitan Meadow

January 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Snow dusts winter oak trees in El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley.

A thick-trunk mature black oak fringed with snow stands in front of a grove of smaller oaks in El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley. The small branches in the upper part of the tree are so thick that they almost create a cloud-like effect in this light, as the low angle winter sun leaves the Valley floor in shadow. A few leaves still remain on the lower branches of the tree.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Grove, Dunderberg Road

December 15, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense grove of thick and twisy aspens growing along Dunderberg Road in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

This just may be my final new aspen photograph from the 2010 season in the eastern Sierra. (Then again, I do go through all of my raw files during the final couple of weeks of the year, and who knows what might turn up!)

The photograph was made late in the day along the dirt track of Dunderberg Road in a grove of trees that I have visited in the past. Aspen trees can assume a seemingly infinite variety of forms, ranging from the groves of tall and slender trees growing in near perfect symmetry to stunted and twisted specimens that seem more like shrubs than trees. In this grove the trees seem to have endured some real stress – they have thick and strong trunks, but the trees are not tall and the trunks are gnarled and twisted in all sorts of crazy directions. Often when you see a trunk as thick as this one you would expect the tree to be quite tall… but not here.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Glacier Point and Ground Fog in Ahwahnee Meadow, Autumn

November 19, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

Thin morning ground fog floats above the dry autumn grasses of Ahwahnee Meadow below the granite cliffs of Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley.

During the cooler and wetter months of the year, ground fog often forms in the meadows of Yosemite Valley. Ahwahnee Meadow is one of the places I like to photograph these conditions, and since this was the morning after a damp and rainy day, I arrived here very early in anticipation of conditions that might produce the fog. It was very cold when I arrived, certainly below freezing by at least a few degrees. At first the fog was much denser and a bit deeper. I have photographs from this earlier pre-dawn period when a herd of deer passed through the meadow. Eventually, as the sun rose high enough that the light beams began to clear the mountains to the east of the Valley, the first light began to strike the upper slopes and walls of Glacier Point. As this happened and the air began to move and the temperature stopped dropping, the fog began to thin. This photograph was made shortly before the fog actually dissipated completely, and thin streamers of mist are broken up by clearer areas.

I have to admit that I do not know what the foreground plant is. (Hint: I won’t mind even a tiny bit if someone wants to write and tell me! :-) Cottony tufts are found at the top of long stems, growing out of odd shaped pods. I shot this with a very wide angle lens so that I could include some of this foreground foliage and the fill width of Glacier Point.

On a technical note, this image incorporates a blend of two exposures. Portions of the sky at the left side of the frame were very bright, while much of the rest of the scene was in shade and a lot darker. Almost the entire frame is from the 1/15 second exposure, but I have manually blended in a bit of the 1/40 second exposure in the area of cloudy sky at upper left in order to retain a bit of detail there. Also, though it should be obvious, this was shot with an ultra-wide angle lens – a 17mm focal length on a full frame DSLR. If you are at all familiar with this location in the Valley you will recognize that this is a bit of an unusual view.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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