Tag Archives: ridge

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

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley

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Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley - Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California's Central Valley and the Coast Range.
Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California's Central Valley and the Coast Range.

Migratory Birds in Twilight, Central Valley. Merced National Wildlife Refuge, California. February 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Migratory birds flly though the twillight winter sky above California’s Central Valley and the Coast Range.

I made this photograph when it was almost too dark to see clearly. In fact, when I packed up and drove away a few minutes later, it was so dark that I momentarily got mildly lost on my way out of the refuge! Long after the sun had set, and at the time when perhaps the most intense sky colors appear, the migratory birds were still in flight above the Central Valley, often silhouetted against the colorful dusk sky just above the horizon.

This photograph is going to get a bit more technical explanation than usual. I had a 100-400mm telephoto on the camera at this point since I had been photographing the birds in a variety of ways, including trying to fill the frame with one or a few birds. While some might say that shooting a prime lens of this length could have some image quality advantages, this photograph wouldn’t have happened if I had been shooting, say, a 400mm prime. Since I wanted to move quickly from targeting small sections of the surroundings or even individual birds to making photographs that attempt to portray the larger landscape within which the birds are found, I frequently found myself moving quickly to much shorter focal lengths. Here, I realized that I might be able to “zoom out” and include some of the birds in flight high above the valley and the distant mountains in the context of their surroundings. So I shot this at something like 130mm. In addition, because the scene includes subjects that are not that far away (like the trees) and those at much greater distances (like the hills), depth of field was an issue with the longer focal lengths. I couldn’t shoot wide open without some excessive focus issues, so I stopped down to f/11. Think about that for a moment: shooting in extremely low light, stopped down to try to maintain some depth of field… and needing use a shutter speed allowing me to get some definition out of birds flying through the scene. This is essentially being caught between a rock and a hard place… and another rock. With the camera on the tripod, but still aimed manually, I used a shutter speed of 1/13 second and turned image-stabilization on. With all of this stuff pushing boundaries of shutter speed and aperture… my only option was to increase the ISO to 1600. For landscape work. Here’s the thing… in the end, while there was more noise in this photograph than if ISO 100 were possible, it isn’t that bad and probably wouldn’t even be visible to viewers of a print. While I’m usually persistent in my view that little technical differences among cameras don’t amount to much, in this case it was because current cameras make it possible to shoot in ways that were essentially impossible a decade ago that I could get this photograph at all.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Eureka Dunes and Last Chance Range, Morning

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Eureka Dunes and Last Chance Range, Morning - Morning light on the Eureka Dunes and the hills of the Last Chance Range, Death Valley National Park.
Morning light on the Eureka Dunes and the hills of the Last Chance Range, Death Valley National Park.

Eureka Dunes and Last Chance Range, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. January 6, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on the Eureka Dunes and the hills of the Last Chance Range, Death Valley National Park.

While I love – who doesn’t? – the golden hour light on the desert dunes and hills and valleys, I also like to seek out the subtler and more “atmospheric” effects that are often frequently seen in this terrain. I had spent the (very cold!) night alone out here in Eureka Valley. I woke up fairly early, though with the sun having to rise past the ridge of the Last Chance Range, the light did not come early. I soon packed up my camp – which largely meant rearranging stuff in my vehicle – and before long started the drive out toward Lone Pine and my trip back home over Tioga Pass.

But first I planned to stop just a ways away from the camping area so that I could use a long lens to photograph the dunes against the background of the higher surrounding peaks. By the time I did this it was after 9:00 a.m. and the early morning golden hour light was long gone, replaced by the soft and hazy bluish light that is more typical during daylight hours. However, the sun was still low enough to glance across the dunes at a fairly low angle and to backlight the dunes and the mountains behind them. The idea here was to juxtapose some of the different textures, lines, curves, and angles of this landscape – the curving forms of the dunes near the bottom of the frame, the sharply delineated sunlit ridges of the upper dunes, the faint view of jagged and stratified rocks in the low peaks beyond them, the further ridge inclining the opposite direction from the dunes, and the much fainter texture of the huge valley in the distance.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Death Valley Buttes, Morning

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Death Valley Buttes, Morning - Early morning light on the summit of the Death Valley Buttes, with the Panamint Range in the distance, Death Valley National Park, California.
Early morning light on the summit of the Death Valley Buttes, with the Panamint Range in the distance, Death Valley National Park, California.

Death Valley Buttes, Morning. Death Valley National Park, California. January 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on the summit of the Death Valley Buttes, with the Panamint Range in the distance, Death Valley National Park, California.

I found several things in this scene that I often look for in Death Valley, or in other similar places for that matter. I’m always intrigued by the small plants that grow along these very barren and rocky areas, sometimes – as here – along with a few cacti. And of course it is hard to resist the golden early morning light, especially when it is juxtaposed with one of my favorite subjects, more distant mountains somewhat obscured by haze. On top of that, I liked the almost abstract shapes of these forms and combination of the warm sunlight on the foreground hills and the cooler, blue-tone light beyond.

I made this photograph on a morning when I really did not have a specific shooting plan, or perhaps I might say that I had a “negative plan” defining what I was not going to photograph – I set out to not go to some of the familiar and more iconic locations in Death Valley, on this morning and to some extent on this trip. So I ended up on a road that eventually crosses the Amargosa Range and heads off toward Beatty Nevada. I knew I was looking for some sort of juxtaposition of the forms on the outcroppings and buttes up higher on the large gravel fan in this part of the Valley and I knew that I wanted to photograph the early light – but exactly where to do this was not clear. As I drove I passed some promising locations and finally stopped at a pull-out near this site, put on a long lens, and made this and several other photographs from this spot.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Solitary Bird, Twilight Sky

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Solitary Bird, Twilight Sky - A solitary bird perchs against the twilight sky in a tree at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve in California's Central Valley.
A solitary bird perchs against the twilight sky in a tree at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve in California's Central Valley.

Solitary Bird, Twilight Sky. Merced National Wildlife Reserve, California. January 28, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary bird perchs against the twilight sky in a tree at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve in California’s Central Valley.

On this last weekend of January, 2012, I spent my Saturday photographing migratory birds and other related subjects in the Central Valley of California with my friend David Hoffman. We started before dawn south of Sacramento along Woodbridge Road, moved to the Cosumnes River Wildlife Reserve around midday, and then ended up shooting until well after sunset at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve further south down the valley.

At this time of year, one of the most amazing wildlife miracles takes place just over the hill from coastal California as migratory come south to spend the winter in the wetlands of the Central Valley. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I spent almost my entire life as a Californian unaware of this, even though I’ve always spent a lot of time in the outdoors and even though I had friends who did know about this. On the other hand, it was quite an experience to “discover” this annual event just last year when a friend happened to mention the Woodbridge Road area to me one day.

This photograph is the very last photograph I made on this trip and it was getting quite dark by this time. (EXIF file viewers may notice that the exposure was over three seconds long. I think I need to thank that bird for holding so still!) I had been so focused on looking at the scene through the viewfinder and on making photographs that when I finally looked up from the camera I was shocked to realize just how dark it had become!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.