Oaks and Grass, Late Summer. Santa Clara County, California. August 17 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Late summer morning fog clears about oak and grass-covered California hills
Today’s photographic journey was a short one — back to a local park where I have photographed for quite a few years, though not recently. This is a place that I used to go to almost every week, and where I hiked just about every trail, to the point that I became intimately familiar with the place in all seasons. It is a landscape of rolling hills with a few high, rocky outcroppings, many oak trees, and grassland. In the manner of most of California, the grass deeply affects the appearance — changing from “impossible green” in winter and spring to brown or golden, depending upon your disposition. I think of it as golden.
This morning I was in a bit of an autumn frame of mind. (A separate post today will have more to say about that pleasant state.) I got up early to discover that the area was covered by the typical coastal high fog. (I live perhaps an hour’s drive from the Pacific Ocean.) This is not the sort of romantic and moody fog that sits low to the ground and floats among trees. It is the higher, drab, gray kind of fog that produces an undifferentiated sky and very flat light. However, at this time of year that fog will most certainly clear, usually by mid-morning. So I left home in these gray conditions, planning to be among the oaks and grass when the fog began to break up.
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.© Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Thanks, Karl. These hills and oaks and grasses always remind me of how much I enjoy shooting subjects with which I have developed a long and intimate relationship. (I also like photographing the unfamiliar, but it is a very different kind of photography.) I had been away from these hills for months, so going back to this specific spot that I have hiked dozens of times rekindled something that had flickered just a bit recently.
Regarding that first sense of autumn experience, you might be interested in something else I shared today: https://gdanmitchell.com/2014/08/18/autumnisaroundthecorner-day-morning-musing-81814
Take care,
Dan
Dan –
Very evocative. I. too have spent a lot of time in these beautiful rolling hills of central California.
Interesting that you say that yesterday put you in mind of Fall. The same thing happened to me yesterday as well. There is always one day in late summer when something about the changing angle of the sun registers as “Fall”, first just as a feeling then as a recognition that once again, the sun is slipping south toward winter and summer is nearly gone. I suspect that yesterday was that day,