Davenport Bluffs, Sunset. Near Davenport, California. December 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
The last light shines on coastal bluffs and Davenport, California
On this early December day I had gone off to try to join a G+ “photowalk” that was purportedly taking place that day. I was looking forward to going to a few favorite local photography locations and to meeting some people who I’ve only known online. But it was not to be! I ended up being delayed at home and couldn’t leave in time to meet the group at their first location, Henry Cowell Park. I went with Plan B and figured I would try to join up with them at lunch in Davenport. I got there and didn’t see anyone, so I figured that I was early and I drove up the coast a bit. I came back to Davenport and thought they might be in one of the two restaurants, so I picked one and went in for lunch… by myself. (I found out later that, yes, they were in the other restaurant a hundred yards south.) After lunch I went across the road to the parking area when I thought folks might meet up, but still no luck – though I did see a few photographers out on the nearby bluff. I headed out there and finally ran into a couple of people from the group… which had gone down to a nearby beach area to shoot.
Finding interesting stuff up here on the bluff, I decide to work the location I found myself in rather than heading off and looking for something else. While the location was interesting, the light was initially unpromising. However, I thought there was a chance that things might improve later so I walked around and began doing some shooting. At one point, I talked to some other photographers about the somewhat bland lighting conditions and pointed out that it seemed to me that there was at least a chance that we might get a bit of interesting light as the sun dropped to the horizon, when the light can sometimes shine in below the clouds and produce some brief but beautiful conditions. This prediction turned out to be right, and I made this photograph just as the show was beginning, and warm-tone light was starting to hit the bluffs, beaches, and water.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.
Dan,
thanks for sharing this – really lovely composition. The late afternoon sun on the escarpment is gorgeous. It looks like you kept a restrained / light touch on this during post-processing.
I noticed that this was shot at 70 mm – was this with a 70-200 mm lens?
Thanks,
John
Thanks for your comment, John. If that was at 70mm, it is almost certain that I used the 70-200mm lens. (I might have used the 24-105, but my recollection right now is that the longer zoom was more appropriate for the other stuff I had been shooting right before this.)
That light really was beautiful, and I’m glad that the “restraint” came through. The effect of the actual light on the scene was not one of overwhelming, intense color, but more of a sort of a warm and quiet filling of the scene with that light. If I had tried to increase this to the point that it acquired an intensity that the saturation slider might be capable of (!) the subtle effect that attracted me to this light would have been lost. :-)
Dan