Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

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

Little Sur River, Pacific Ocean

January 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Little Sur River meets the Pacific ocean along the Big Sur coastline of California in evening light

On this weekend near the middle of January, the local news and weather reports announced the arrival of very large winter surf along the central and northern California coast. This typically happens a few times every winter, when very distant storms far to the north in the Pacific Ocean near the Aleutian Islands send huge swells south towards California. For those whose experience with the California coast has mainly been to experience the usually gentle surf on summer, these waves can be stunning. When I heard about these conditions I knew I had to make it over to the coast. The setup this weekend was special in another way – the period between large waves was rather long and the larger sets of waves were separated by many minutes. We saw this process in action when we first arrived to find what looked like surprisingly calm seas, with only rather normal looking waves. But within minutes a set of the larger waves began to come ashore and we were astounded at their size and power.

This weekend was doubly special. Not only was the monumental winter surf running, but we had a spell of that weather than can make people from other places envy Californians! We went south from Monterey and into the upper reaches of the Big Sur coastline, where it was beautifully sunny and close to 70 degrees! (For those who think this is actually typical… not quite! In the summer this area is often blanketed by thick fog for days on end.) The waves and the weather drew thousands to the shoreline, and I can’t recall the last time I saw so many people along the coast highway. We joined them and made quite a few photographs during the afternoon hours. At the same time I was scoping out possible locations for that final golden-hour photograph. As the end of the day approached we were very close to Big Sur itself, and I remembered stopping at this spot a bit earlier in the day and thinking about how to compose a photograph of the peninsula separating the curving Little Sur River from the steep cliffs and ocean beyond.

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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

La Sal Mountains, Evening

January 23, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Sunset light on sandstone towers of Arches National Park and on the distant La Sal Mountains, Utah

I was hoping to get up into the La Sal Mountains, in the Moab/Arches area, during this visit to Utah, but it didn’t quite happen. We had seen some aspen groves high on their slopes and thought they could make a good photographic subject, but we were twice stymied – well, once stymied and once we guessed wrong. The wrong guess came first. As we approached Moab late in the day from the south, we though we would turn off the main highway before reaching town and drive up there. However, a sign warning of construction and a road closure dissuaded us, so we turned around and continued to Moab. Later, thinking that if it was closed from the first route (and actually, it wasn’t) then there must be access from the alternative, we drove up the Colorado River Canyon and turned off to head up that way… only to encounter road construction! We could perhaps have continued on, but it was late in the day and we had not calculated this delay when guessing how long it might take to get up to the trees.

So, in the end, our views of the La Sal Mountains were from greater distances – from high on the plateau of Canyonlands National Park and from Arches National Park. On the day I made this photograph, the light had been “interesting” – a combination of blah, clouded-over light, with occasional bursts of beautiful light coming through breaks in the clouds. We had been out on the ridge near the end of the main park road and had really enjoyed those moments of wonderful light, but late in the day it looked like the breaks would end there, but that they might continue over near the section of the park where this photo was made. So we quickly got in the car and headed over that way. When we arrived, things did not look so promising. The large clouds that had begun to block the light earlier were also affecting this area. But there we were, and there wasn’t time to try to get to another location before the end of the day, so we headed up into this rocky area to see what might develop. From here, the La Sals were largely clear, with more sun than shadow on the face of the mountains. Even though there were clouds overhead at our position, they were increasingly broken as they led toward the mountains. Now all I needed was some evening light on the foreground rocks and I might have a photograph. I got my wish, with just a few brief moments of somewhat attenuated golden hour light on the rocks as the more intense light fell on the distant range.

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

Davenport Bluffs, Dusk

January 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light on a series of bluffs marching south from Davenport, California

This photograph comes from early December, 2012, when I attempted to join a group of folks on a “photowalk” in the Santa Cruz, California area. I was originally supposed to meet up with them at Henry Cowell park (for photography of redwoods), but missed that mid-morning rendezvous due to my own scheduling issues. I knew they would be heading over to the area near Davenport, just up the coast from Santa Cruz, a bit later in the morning. So I headed over there… and ended up eating my lunch along in a restaurant about 100 yards north of the restaurant where they were all meeting! Then I somehow missed the next rendezvous almost directly across the street, and instead ended up on nearby coastal bluffs to do my photography.

This photograph was the last one I made that evening, well after the sun had set. It was quite dark by this point, so much so that after I finished and packed up it was becoming difficult to see the path back to my car. Exposures were getting quite long – this one was, I believe, about 30 seconds long, and I had been successively opening up my aperture in order to keep the exposure time down to a reasonable half-minute. Often some of the most interesting and evocative light can come after sunset, sometimes well after sunset. The light softens and diffuses, as it comes from large areas of the sky and not from the point source of the sun. The colors change, heading toward blue but also including other subtle tones such as the pinks seen in the clouds in this photograph. And the longer exposures allow me to create a sort of fantastical effect by letting surf and spray blur out over the long exposures. (For a night photographer like me, such images also raise interesting questions about where the boundaries between “night photography” and just plain photography lie.)

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Rat Rock Island, Hills

January 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rat Rock Island and hills of the north San Francisco Bay

This remarkable little island sits just a short distance from the shoreline along the northern San Francisco Bay. Several things contribute to its visual appeal. It is unexpected, in that it is not exactly common to find such islands in this bay. It seems that what formed the island might have been a process similar to one found in coastal areas with much rougher seas, where rocky peninsulas are eventually cut off from the shoreline. The area is very quiet, in contrast to the busy north bay areas you typically might drive through to get here, and the main sounds are those of shore birds. The view beyond the island is expansive – the far side of the bay is distant enough that you the hills are little more than a think break along the horizon, and mostly you see sky and water. The shape of the island is almost but not quite symmetrical, and the little bonsai-like trees on the “summit” echo the curve of the island.

I used a nine-stop neutral density filter so that I could get a relatively long ten second exposure for this photograph. The idea was to let the slight motion of the water blur and create a smooth, glassy quality. (If the clouds had been moving faster, they might also have been blurred. Although it probably isn’t apparent in the photograph, this image is partially the result of quite a bit of work during the post-processing phase.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

Little Sur River, Pacific Ocean

La Sal Mountains, Evening

Davenport Bluffs, Dusk

Rat Rock Island, Hills

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.