Tag Archives: wildlife

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

Six Ross’s Geese in Flight

June 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small flock of six Ross’s geese in flight against the sky in golden hour light, San Joaquin Valley, California

Late on this January afternoon – more like early evening perhaps – we were staking out a small flock of Ross’s geese that had parked themselves in a nearby pond. There were not that many of them – nothing like the flocks of many thousands that we have watched on some other evenings, when they gradually depart in small groups over a long period of time, or the very large group we saw earlier this year that mostly just moved around in a pasture near where we were shooting. Each time a small sub group departed on this evening, they created a noticeable decline in the number of birds left behind.

However, they somewhat compensated for their small numbers by means of their more “photographable” departure path, at least in some cases. Rather than flying away from us, some instead flew from left to right in front of our position and some of them even did a few laps overhead before actually leaving. This group of six was among those most obliging geese. They had departed to the right, looped back around to the left, and then flew across in front of us a second time, all the while taking a fairly low flight path. As this group passed by I watched carefully though the viewfinder to try to catch them in an instant when none of them obscured the others in the flock, and I caught such a moment here with the added bonus of a bit of slightly golden late afternoon light.

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

Marsh and Fog

June 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Water plants disappear into the fog.

On this late-November day, I had initially gone to a Central Valley wildlife refuge in hopes of photographing migratory birds. When I arrived the fog was so thick that birds were just about impossible to see. I went ahead and made a slow circumnavigation of the refuge, stopping to try to photograph birds from time to time. The first that I found – by hearing rather than seeing – were a group of Ross’s geese that were just barely visible through the fog, but not really photographable in the ways that I had in mind. A bit further along the perimeter road, an egret stayed put long enough that I could point the lens out the car window and make a few photographs, and shortly after that I came upon a group of white-faced ibises. I photographed these, too, but in the thick fog the results were not very exciting. I continued on around the refuge, finding nothing.

At this point I was starting to think that I might simply have to wait for the fog to clear, but instead I decided to make one more circuit and see if there was any way to photograph the landscape in this fog. As I did this, and temporarily let the bird photography idea slip aside, I started to see some interesting subjects in the plants growing in the water and on small drier clumps surrounded by the marsh. This simple photograph was made shooting handheld from the car, with the camera pointed into the thick fog which caused the landscape to fade into gray no more than 100 yards away.

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

Snow Geese, Sunset

May 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Snow geese in flight at sunset, Sacramento Valley

I made this in the last moments of an early March visit to the California Central Valley to photograph migratory birds. (As I write this in late March, I’m pretty certain that this was the final “goose chase” of this winter season.) I had come across a very large flock of snow geese in a field alongside a road south of Sacramento near the end of the day – somewhat to my surprise – so I pulled over on the barely adequate shoulder of the road and photographed over a fence and some roadside weeds as the birds began to fly off in small groups.

This little episode illustrates, for me, some of the unpredictability and luck involved in photographing such birds. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of having appropriate equipment and knowing how to use it, nor of having some idea of where to find the birds. But there is a lot about this that is not in the photographer’s control. I had started the day many miles south of here before dawn at a very different wildlife site. My plans were a bit vague beyond starting there, and when the opportunities seemed a bit less than idea after the morning shoot, I decided that I would use the “blah light” midday hours to travel up the valley a good distance to another area where I had not photographed since last season. (This added bit of driving also allowed me to investigate a few highways and side roads that I had been wanting to check out.) After a long drive of nearly two hours I arrived at this location in the Sacramento area and found… not at all what I had hoped for. I was hoping for more large flocks of birds, preferably geese and/or cranes, but at the first place I stopped it seemed that formerly flooded fields had now been drained and tilled. I moved to another area, but still couldn’t see what I had in mind to shoot. I drove around a bit trying to get the lay of the land and discover if perhaps the birds were somewhere other than where I expected to find them, but aside from a few small groups I didn’t find much. I took a nap. I started the usual contemplation about how not every shoot is successful and reminded myself that it was a good day even if nothing turned up here. As sunset approached I decided to make one last loop around the area, stopping to briefly photograph a few Canadian geese. As I watched the, I caught a glimpse of the tell-tale white birds off to the north and since I wasn’t finding anything all the compelling where I was I drove off in that direction. I soon was surprised to find a field filled with many thousands of geese – and a bit more surprised to find that they (or at least many of them) were snow geese rather than the Ross’s geese I often photograph. I stood along the road, separated from them by a low fence and tall weeds and watched. Before long small groups began to take of and fly low angle paths across the field toward the setting sun. The light was beautiful but often they were in front of farmland buildings, trees, and wires. I kept shooting and occasionally a group would rise high enough and quickly enough to appear against early evening sky. One of the important factors, or at least it seems to me, is to capture the group when the birds are in a pleasing and interesting configuration. Too often they overlap, or may not have wings raised or lowered, or there distances may vary enough to create focus problems – so it is no surprise that a good percentage of the shots aren’t keepers. (I have a sense of when this is more likely to work, but only a sense.) But this group managed to cooperate nicely, not only flying against background of clear sky, heading into the golden hour sunset light, but also managing to maintain enough separation that none of them overlap at all.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Young Elephant Seals

May 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of young elephant seals along the California coast

Back in mid-February we took a day to make a very long looping drive from the San Francisco Bay Area down to almost Morro Bay and then back up the coast highway along the Big Sur coastline. The plan was to both visit the elephant seal areas near the southern end of this drive and to also look for landscape photography opportunities. Starting out early in the morning, it looked like the rainy weather to our north might not follow us south… but we were wrong. It was cloudy the whole way down, and when we arrived at this coastal elephant seal “nursery” it rained intermittently. Sometimes rain can be wonderful for landscape photography, but somehow this rain wasn’t quite playing out that way, so we focused on the wildlife instead. (Later, the weather did offer up some very interesting light as the weather began to break further up the coast.)

The area where I photographed these elephant seals is a well-known one right along the highway and, as expected, there were quite a few other people there to get close up looks at these impressive creatures. At this time of year there are large bulls, nursing mothers, young animals (that appear to me to be more or less adolescents), and nursing pups. Compared to certain times of the year when the bulls are jousting and fighting, things seemed rather calm. For the most part the seals seemed to largely be lounging around on the sand. We walked the opposite direction from the large crowd and found some good overlooks from which the seals could easily be photographed with long lenses. In places there were groups of these younger animals clustered closely together, presenting an image that seemed anthropomorphically “cute.” But don’t be fooled – these are pretty tough creatures that seem to lead a tough and challenging life.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: wildlife

Marsh and Fog

Snow Geese, Sunset

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