Tag Archives: branch

Photographs: Nature

Three Foxglove Flowers

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Three Foxglove Flowers
Three white foxglove flowers hanging from a branch in shade.

Three Foxglove Flowers. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Three white foxglove flowers hanging from a branch in shade.

Most of the time when I photograph foxglove flowers I tend to work with the vertical stalks of very colorful flowers, and I try to use a point of view that lets us look into the individual flowers. For one thing, there are often some fascinating patters inside the blossoms. But this time I decided to go in a different direction with this photograph of flowers hanging from a horizontal stalk.

The flowers were growing in a shady area and it was early evening, so I had very soft light to work with. By shooting across the hanging flowers I was able to put three of them in the frame but also include some background flowers behind them. And somehow the monophonic interpretation seems right in this case.

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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Photographs: Nature

Foxglove Flowers

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Foxglove Flowers
A row of colorful foxglove flowers hang from a horizontal branch.

Foxglove Flowers. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

A row of colorful foxglove flowers hang from a horizontal branch.

The garden where we found these flowers contains hundreds of blooming foxglove plants, or at least it did when we visited in early June. They are quite impressive plants, typically with tall and upright stalks supporting large, densely-packed masses of colorful flowers with their characteristic dotted pattern inside the blossoms.

A few were so full of flowers that they had leaned over, and as a result the flowers were hanging staring down below small green leaves and the main stem. I photographed this in soft evening light, not long before sunset.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

At the Wrack Line

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At the Wrack Line
Material washed up by the tide at Weston Beach, Point Lobos

At the Wrack Line. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Material washed up by the Pacific Coast tide.

It had been too long since my last visit to the coast. The Pacific Ocean is barely more than a half hour away, and the Big Sur coast is only about twice that far. This coast has been part of my life since my parents took our family there when I was a child. When traveling, two things make me nervous – being too far from mountains and being too far from the coast. So this morning, after too long of an interval, I headed over there and ended up at Point Lobos.

Much to my surprise, my first stop was at the place known as Weston Beach. (It always feels like it should be called Weston Cove, but I digress.) As I began photographing I felt a bit like perhaps I was revisiting a place that has been done, and overdone, and overdone again. But I have a personal connection to this little cove and its rocks and pebbles, and I ended up enjoying a rather long period of slowly poking around, checking out rocks, looking for stuff washed up on the shore. (About that title: I had to look up what to call this stuff, and I learned that the closet thing to an official term for natural things washed up on the beach is “wrack.”)

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Red-Winged Blackbird Territorial Display

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Red-Winged Blackbird Territorial Display
Red-Winged blackbird on its perch, late-winter territorial display.

Red-Winged Blackbird Territorial Display. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Red-Winged blackbird on its perch, late-winter territorial display.

One beneficial personal effect of my bird photography has been greater awareness of parts of the local natural world that I had not paid a lot of attention to. As I have mentioned previously, I not really a “birder” in the usual sense of the word, and while I’ve enjoyed observing birds in the wild I can’t claim to be an expert on them. But photographing them has encouraged me to ask questions about what I’m seeing and to learn more.

There are two similar types of small blackbirds where I photograph, the tricolored blackbird and the red-winged blackbird. Both seem to my untrained bird-watching eyes to be pretty darned similar, apart from the extra bands of color on the shoulders of the former. Both are common in grasslands and related agricultural areas. Some sources suggest that populations have declined due to climate change and the loss of habitat, and that their range has shrunk. Apparently the eye-catching display — puffed out feathers and “exhibit of the colorful shoulder patches — is, at least during the late-winter period when I made the photograph, used to mark territory prior to the breeding season.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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