Tag Archives: wings

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

Geese Rising

December 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of geese takes to the air above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

Sometimes bad light turns out to be good light. Late in the day I made one last circuit of this location, hoping to find some birds to photograph in sunset light. However, the light was obscured by the clouds of an incoming weather system and much of the light at this location became rather flat and gray. (The light to the west was another story, and another photograph made within moments of this one includes a rather spectacular sky in the distance.) It was cloudy enough that most of the light had faded before sunset, and there wasn’t much left after that at all.

Yet… the flat light has its advantages. One of the challenges of photographing airborne birds is that when they rise against the sky they are often lit from above, and it can be difficult to get a photograph that isn’t simply a silhouette. But the soft light fills those shadows, and here there was also a bit of gentle light coming from the western sky through sunset clouds that had picked up a bit of color. As I stood around watching a large group of geese (mostly snow geese) settled in a pond, the suddenly erupted into flight en masse, in the typical wild show of fluttering wings and loud vocalization. The turned and passed right in front of me before continuing on to some unknown place far to the west.

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

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

Wings of an Egret

January 21, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An egret spreads its wings as it takes to the air above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

The great egret is an impressive and fascinating bird. They are found in many places here in California — along creeks and drainage ditches, near wetlands, along parts of the seashore. A few years ago there was one that lived at a small pond at a place where I regularly hiked and photographed, and I could count on finding it almost every time I went there. Their striking white appearance draws attention on the winter landscape, where they stand out against darker background and against California’s winter green. They are, perhaps surprisingly for such beautiful and graceful things, skillful hunters.

I first noticed them quite a few years ago in creek beds of urban areas in northern California, and eventually learned that they are found all over the place. They often stand almost completely still, though if you watch them a bit you’ll frequently figure out that they are hunting, observing and then slowly moving toward their prey. Because they seem so still, they look like they would perhaps allow a close approach, but they seem to usually have boundaries — get too close and they take off suddenly, displaying their large and beautiful wings and more than most birds they really do seem to float on the air. Photographing them on the ground isn’t too hard, though getting the in interesting poses can take some patience — but photographing them in flight is quite tricky. They take off suddenly, and I find it hard to be precisely ready for the liftoff when it comes. They tend to fly at very low heights, often flying along ditches and behind plants. And they are most often flying away from you. When I came upon this one I remained in my vehicle but got ready to photograph it if took flight, and when it did I have a tiny moment to fire of a small number of shot, one of which framed the beautiful wings fully spread and against a darker background.

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

Four Ross’s Geese, Sunset Light

April 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Four Ross’s geese in flight against the sky in sunset light

I photographed this group of Ross’s geese late in the day, just as golden hour light was beginning to intensify. We had spent the day in the San Joaquin Valley, visiting a couple of wildlife refuges, and returned at the end of the day to the place where we had begun shooting before dawn. We hoped for some combination of evening geese and then a dusk fly-in of sandhill cranes.

The amount of control you have when photographing these birds is minimal. It is up to them to decide where they will settle in, when and in what direction they will fly, and much more. A lot of the process involves doing things that you hope will increase your odds – being in likely spots at likely times, and so forth – then being ready to take advantage of whatever comes your way. The latter requires some sensitivity to how things are developing, some experience with the camera so that you can make decisions quickly and track flying birds that may turn up unexpectedly, and more. The situation with the geese on this evening was a bit unusual, at least in my experience. At this place we have often been able to find very large flocks of the birds late in the day, at which point a reasonable strategy is to position yourself nearby, taking into consideration the direction of the light, possible backgrounds, and the paths they will likely fly. Then you wait, ready to photograph, until the birds decide to do what birds decide to do! With luck, they will lift off in interesting groups, against interesting backdrops, and in good light. On this evening, we were only able to find one relatively small group of Ross’s geese. (We saw other much larger groups in the area, but they were further off and in places inaccessible to us.) So we found out spot nearby and waited, photographing very small groups of them as they lifted off and flow to the north. However, a few groups did an extra loop or two around us, coming back over our position quite low. You never know how the birds will line up, and often they will ether be too separated from one another or else they are so tightly clustered that you get blocked heads or wings that cover other birds. However, this group was polite enough to line themselves up in such a way that as they flew past each of them was completely visible in the evening light.

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

Geese in Motion

January 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of geese takes flight in front of a winter evening sky, San Joaquin Valley, California

This is another bird photograph that intentionally flirts with the limits long shutter speed in order to allow motion blur to affect the image. This is perhaps a bit less “abstract” than the previous one I shared in that you can still see reasonably well-defined shapes of some birds in this photograph.

On a winter evening in California’s Central Valley I intentionally lowered the shutter speed to a setting much slower than normally used for handheld shots with a long lens. I tracked the birds as they lifted off during the evening “fly out” event, attempting to shoot during moments when the flock assembled itself into some sort of interesting configuration and, if possible was seen against something interesting in the sky beyond – dusk colors, other birds, etc. The faint blurs in the lower portion of the image are more distant flock. Although it almost doesn’t matter in a photograph like this one, the birds are Ross’s geese. One thing that appeals to me in this photograph is that while the birds are little more than vaporous smudges in some places, in other you can almost make out actual details for their shapes.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: wings

Geese Rising

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Wings of an Egret

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Geese in Motion

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

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