Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

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

Coal Chute Point and The Pit

2 Comments
Coal Chute Point and The Pit - Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.
Coal Chute Point and The Pit - Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

Coal Chute Point and The Pit. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. March 29, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

(Shortly after posting this, another photographer wrote to suggest that I might consider renaming the image to “Point and Chute.” ;-)

For all the years – decades, actually, and more than a few – that I’ve been visiting Point Lobos, there are still places that I have not gotten around to visiting within the boundaries of the park. Among them are some headlands not far from Whalers Cove that I’ve looked at for a long time… and then always headed off to some other part of the reserve without visiting them. Earlier this week I visited Point Lobos with no particular goal in mind aside from making some photographs, and I somehow finally ended up in this picturesque area that offers some quite different views from those found in the areas that more directly face out into the Pacific. (While it is, indeed, picturesque… the place names are not. Coal Chute Point? The Pit?)

The light in this photograph is somewhat subdued, at least in comparison to some of the photographs you might see of such a place, typically shot in the evening when the sky is at its most colorful. (Yes, I’ve certainly made my share of those photographs at Point Lobos, too!) But this light had a different sort of appeal, and it continuously changed during my half day there. When I arrived some fog was just clearing near the coast. It was a strange pattern – fog way inlands that looked more like the typical winter valley tule fog than the summer coastal fog. In fact, as is frequently the case in winter, it was clear at the coast. But somewhat surprisingly there was a regular old fog bank lurking a ways off the shoreline – and later in the day it moved in on the coast. Along with this there were high, thin clouds from a weather front that was passing well to the north. These conditions can still provide directional light but light which is softer and can fill in the shadows a bit – making it possible to shoot in places and at times of the day when the light might otherwise be too harsh. For this photograph I decided to “go wide,” and shoot with a 24mm focal length of a full frame DSLR to accentuate the distance between the foreground beach and the distant horizon and to include the full width of the curving wave as it broke on the beach.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Spring Flood, Tuolumne River

Leave a comment
Spring Flood, Tuolumne River - The Tuolumne River floods during the spring runoff, Yosemite National Park.
The Tuolumne River floods during the spring runoff, Yosemite National Park.

Spring Flood, Tuolumne River. Yosemite National Park, California. January 19, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Tuolumne River floods during the spring runoff, Yosemite National Park.

The 2010-11 winter brought above average or record snowfall to the Sierra Nevada, and the Tioga Pass Road through Yosemite National Park opened later than usual. Many of us who were feeling the pent-up need to see the high country headed up there as soon as the road opened. I spent a weekend in the Tioga Pass area and got in two days of early season high Sierra photography.

Those who have only seen this area during the more usual summer season in July and August might be very surprised by what it looks like when the road first opens. At and below the nearly 10,000′ elevation of the pass there was still a lot of snow, and lakes were frozen even down at the 8000′ level. Trail hiking, as appealing as it might sound, is quite difficult as you have to cross a lot of snow, cross very fast-moving and cold streams, and negotiate lots of flooded and muddy areas. This spot is a wonderful case in point. A few weeks later you would find people hiking and lounging about it meadow grasses where the water is seen in this photograph. The early season Tuolumne River was so full that it left its banks in many areas, finding new paths through the forests and flooding many meadows which took on more of the appearance of lakes. (Large sections of the main Tuolumne Meadow were also completely submerged at this point.) It is a wonderful time in the Sierra – still with a bit of the feeling of winter, but also with the promise of summer everywhere.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House

1 Comment
Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House - Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.
Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House. San Francisco, California. June 29, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

We are fortunate to have season tickets to San Francisco Opera. (No. Not box seats. Not even orchestra seats. But, still, the opera… :-) So we spend a fair amount of time in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco and wander around the place a bit before shows and during intermissions. I find the whole place architecturally interesting, and some day I would love to have an opportunity to go in there with all of the right gear and have free run of the place to make photographs.

But for now I have to make do. This particular entry and the stairwell beyond have intrigued me for a while. Long before I made this photograph I had made a few iPhone images of the scene and thought about what it contains and some of the reasons that it must attract me. Last summer we went to the San Francisco Opera performance of Wagner’s “Ring,” and due to the somewhat extreme length of the component operas, many of the performances started fairly early – this one started at 7:00 p.m., meaning that there was plenty of light coming in from the windows to the right of the scene. On this evening I had brought along a camera body and a single 50mm prime, which turned out to be just about the right lens for this scene.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Pine Cones and Ice, Reflected Sky

Leave a comment
Pine Cones and Ice, Reflected Sky - Pine cones on morning ice, blue with reflected light from the sky, Yosemite National Park.
Pine cones on morning ice, blue with reflected light from the sky, Yosemite National Park.

Pine Cones and Ice, Reflected Sky. Yosemite National Park, California. June 19, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pine cones on morning ice, blue with reflected light from the sky, Yosemite National Park.

I’m on a bit of a minor Yosemite run right now, as I’ve found a bit of extra time to get back to my review of the past ten year’s of image files. I had almost completed the task earlier this year, but the work stalled out a few months back somewhere in the spring of 2011. I’m now up to June of that year and hoping to continue the slog!

I made this photograph right about the time that Tioga Pass first opened for the season – not the first day, but very close to it. I had gotten up very early that morning to photograph in the pre-dawn cold near Tioga Pass, and from there began to work my way back to the west towards Tuolumne Meadows. I stopped at a small roadside lake to photograph a larger scene and as I was setting up for that shot I looked down and noticed the newly formed ice with its fractured texture reflecting the morning’s blue sky and supporting a variety of things that had blown down including a couple of pine cones. If you look carefully you can just make out rocks and grasses beneath the ice.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.