Category Archives: Photographs: Central California

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

Cypress Trees in Fog

September 9, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cypress trees on rocky shoreline cliffs at Pinnacle Point, Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

Not the weather I was expecting…

In the middle of a Saturday afternoon I was trying to decide where in the greater SF Bay Area to shoot. I’d shot in The City a few days ago, and shot Muir Woods at about the same time, so I wasn’t thinking of those kinds of locations. As I frequently do when pondering such things, I went to the NWS web site to see what conditions might be like on the coast. I had a vague notion to go to Point Lobos for an evening shoot, so I checked the weather report for that area. I must have read too fast because I didn’t see anything about fog…

So I quickly loaded up and headed off to the Monterey Peninsula with ideas about photographing beautiful golden hour light at one of my favorite shoreline locations. Oddly, as I approached the Salinas River, there was some fog in the air. In full-on “explain it away” mode I told myself that it was probably remnants left over from the clearing that was certainly underway now. Supporting this notion, by the time I got to Marina the air over the Bay was quite clear, though there were some clouds atop the ridge above Monterey. Again, I told myself, “It is clearing still. I’ll get there just in time for the sun to emerge!”

Passing Carmel it was just plain foggy, and when I entered Point Lobos nothing changed. Still, I told myself – again! – that it must have just not cleared here yet. Any sane person who knows this area would have recognized my delusion at this point. While it is possible – just barely – for the fog to clear at 5:30 along this coastline, that is about as likely as putting your car in first gear and having it go backwards… Nonetheless, I wandered on out to the Monterey Cypress groves along the northern portion of the Reserve, happy to photograph the trees in the soft light of the fog.

As the evening wore on, it eventually became clear – even to me! – that the fog was coming in, not going out. I set about looking for “foggy subjects” to photograph, still working mostly in and around the cypress forest. This photograph is yet another example of how conditions can change the shot completely. Here there was just enough fog to mute the background pinnacle and other rocks and barely reveal a bit of the ocean beyond, but it was not so foggy that the closer tree on the rocky prominence was hidden.

On a clearer evening I would have stayed a half hour after sunset to continue shooting… but the light was really gone long before that.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Beach Walkers, Winter Sunset

September 6, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of beachwalkers cross the sand before sunset at the end of a winter day.

I made this photograph last winter, but didn’t rediscover it until yesterday when I had the opportunity to go back though some work from early this year. It is probably another case of initially viewing the photograph from the perspective of what I thought I was shooting at the time – and it wasn’t successful from that perspective – versus coming back to it with some aesthetic distance and seeing it for what it is. It also helped, I think, to lose some of the sky and present it as a 2:1 ratio panoramic format.

This was actually my first visit to this particular beach. I had driven past many times without stopping, but for some reason on this evening I pulled over and wandered down to the beach, shooting there and from the bluffs above the beach.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Summer Grass, Calero Hills

August 26, 2009 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dry summer grasses growing near Castillero Pond at the Calero Hills, California.

In this photograph – yes, from the same series from Castillero Pond – I wanted to isolate the light colored grass seeds from the background, and try to reveal the very delicate stems of the grass and other dry plants. The background was essentially the same color as these subjects and was also terribly detailed – so I used a very narrow depth of field to reduce the background detail to an amorphous blur. Although it might not seem like your typical macro lens, I photographed this with a 100-400mm zoom at 400mm!

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Cattail and Grasses, Morning Light

August 23, 2009 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

A cattail stands among dry summer grasses at Castillero Pond, Calero Hills, California.

The next in the series – and, yes, there will likely be more! – of photographs of cattails and grasses from a recent morning shoot at Castillero Pond, not far from where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In these photographs I was playing with a whole series of ideas: the color and form of the late-season summer cattails in the warm morning side-lighting, the effect of blurring out the background of grasses and pond water, and the interesting color palette of yellow/gold, green, and blue. To a certain extent, I was also “going with the flow” since I had arrived at this pond with no strong preconceptions about what I would shoot- I had vague ideas concerning oak trees and open grassland and possibly photographing birds as I passed the pond – and then ended up being distracted by well over an hour by the subject of this series.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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