Winter Trees, Levee Road, Fog. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Tule fog softens the light on a Central Valley levee road winding among winter trees.
My usual inclination when photographing a place like this is to focus on the natural and to exclude the signs of the human presence. It is perhaps ironic that I embrace the human world in my street photography but often obscure it in my other work. I think this comes from the desire to imagine a “natural” work without, well, us. There are fine reasons to do this, but there are also some reasons to not imagine that we are not part of the natural world. (This subject likely deserves and article, a book, a small library — not a two-paragraph post!)
During the winter months I often photograph in California’s Central Valley, attracted by the tule fog and by the migratory birds. And I mostly photograph these subjects as examples of nature. But the Central Valley is anything but a natural wilderness! It is crisscrossed by roads large and small, increasingly filled by towns and cities, and dominated by the agriculture industry. The good news is that those things are interesting photographic subjects, too. This road more or less winds along a levee at the edge of a large pond. I paused here to look back and the way I had come, photographing the road winding through a gentle landscape of tule fog and winter trees.
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.
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