Sunset Bluffs, Pacific Coast. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Late-autumn sunset light on California coastal bluffs south of San Francisco.
My recollection of this photograph is that I had gone to the coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz on this late-autumn evening partially because I had heard that people I knew were meeting up there to photograph and get together for dinner at an area restaurant. If I recall correctly, things did not go quite as planned. I think I ended up in the wrong restaurant and didn’t find these folks, and eventually I wandered off to some nearby bluffs by myself — which actually suits me fine when I’m making photographs, too.
It was a late afternoon and evening of interesting conditions, the sort that may produce something very special but which are more likely, perhaps, to be a complete bust. There was overcast and some haze in the air, and the light in afternoon was not really spectacular — it was a bit flat and the overcast made it more dull as sunset approached. However, there was the potential for something interesting. The cloud bank that stretched away from the coast seemed to terminate offshore, and there was a gap between this edge and the horizon. If that remained, I knew that there might be a brief moment of spectacular light coming through this gap just before the sud dropped below the horizon. If the band of light is narrow the colors can be intense in its beam while remaining darker and far less intense elsewhere. As you can see, that is precisely what happened.
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 and Amazon.
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