Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwoods Great And Small

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Redwoods Great And Small
Dense Northern California redwood forest containing both old-growth and young trees

Redwoods Great And Small. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense Northern California redwood forest containing both old-growth and young trees

I’ve lived on the fringes of California’s coastal redwoods ever since my family moved to the state when I was four-years-old. For years we did weekend trips to places like Big Basin Redwoods State Park, often hiking through the trees and beyond. So I have always been familiar with these extraordinarily tall trees and with the special forests they inhabit. However, it wasn’t until much later that I understood how truly rare the original old-growth forests are. I recently read that only 5% of the original forest was left mostly untouched — meaning that 95% of the trees (19 out of 20!) were cut down during a fairly short period, mostly in the 20th century. This was an astounding example of where greed can push humankind, and we can reasonably imagine that without intervention all of the old-growth forests would have been lost forever. If that greed had gotten its way, you would have to reimagine scenes like this one with only the slender trees on the right, because certain parties would have cut up every accessible tree like the one on the left.

Today it seems bizarre to recall the strong objections to saving these remnants back when the Redwood National Park was first proposed. Even conserving parts of the last 5% of the ancient forests seemed to be a bridge to far for interests blinded by their long-term investments in a nearly depleted natural resource, and they fought bitterly against that parks. There are several lessons in this. This was not isolated resistance to conservation — it has been the pattern with the creation of essentially all of our great American parks and other efforts to protect wilderness and natural areas. There are [i]always[/i] a few very loud voices shrieking that the protection of a few last remnants of America’s great landscape will ruin their economy. (Witness the Utah minority today working to undo national monuments.) However, now that our park system is well over a century old, it is plainly obvious that virtually every single protected area is regarded as a treasure and virtually no sane person would argue that we did the wrong thing by protecting them.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Alder Thicket And Stream

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Alder Thicket And Stream
A small stream flows through the dense foliage of an alder thicket in Northern California redwood country

Alder Thicket And Stream. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small stream flows through the dense foliage of an alder thicket in Northern California redwood country

It was my first evening in redwood country, and I had only a few hours and little idea where to start, so I headed to Redwood National Park (part of the larger “State and National Parks” complex) and turned up a road toward a well-known grove of redwoods. I only stopped there briefly, deciding instead to explore further up the road even though I really had almost no idea what I would find up there. I finally broke out of the redwood forest at a couple of clearings from which I was able to get a broader overview of the surroundings. (It did occur to me that the larger one was likely there only because redwoods had been cleared from it many years ago.)

I now had a bit of a schedule to follow, as I hoped to find a place to photograph the last light of the day and then continue on to my lodgings in Crescent City. However, I often find it hard to resist a detour, especially when it looks like it might go somewhere interesting, so I turned off onto a side road that quickly dead-ended at the bottom of a canyon where a small creek flowed and the foliage grew very thickly. This was not actually a redwood forest location — at least not in this immediate spot — but the more open light among the alder trees supported lush undergrowth around this little creek.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Mouth of the Klamath

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Mouth of the Klamath
Evening fog at the mouth of the Klamath River and the Northern California Coastline

Mouth of the Klamath. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog at the mouth of the Klamath River and the Northern California Coastline

The first day of my early June visit to the Redwood National and State Parks area was largely devoted to the very long drive up from the San Francisco Bay Area. I got an early start — always important to at least try to get out of the Bay Area early on commute days! — and was in Redding by late morning. While that is certainly far enough north it isn’t far enough west, and a three-hour drive to the coast was still ahead of me, plus perhaps another hour north along the coast to my lodgings in Crescent City.

After so much inland driving, it was a relief to finally reach the coast in the Eureka/Arcata area and to then turn north toward my destination. I lingered a bit in the Klamath River area. I feel a bit of a connection to this river as I have spent some time photographing birds in the area where it crosses the California-Oregon border. I didn’t know this area around the river’s mouth at all — I just knew that the low hills and coastal light were beautiful. I crossed the river on a long bridge, passed by various businesses clustered near its north end, and soon found a promising road out to the hills just to the north, from which there is a panoramic view back across the rivers itself and the hills and coast to the south.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Sea Stacks and Evening Light

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Sea Stacks and Evening Light
Evening light from the setting sun reflects on surf along the Northern California coast

Sea Stacks and Evening Light. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light from the setting sun reflects on surf along the Northern California coast

I posted another photograph of this scene earlier — more on that relationship in a moment. I was driving between Eureka, near where I had been photographing redwoods for a few days, and Fort Bragg, where I planned to make a stop midway on my drive back to the San Francisco Bay Area. I knew this location from previous visits, and when I left the redwood parks three or four hours to the north, I scheduled my departure with a sunset stop at this location in mind.

I had hopes for an interesting sunset here, but my initial hopes frustrated when I arrived to find high fog, basically a blah condition. However, since I was not far from my destination and since there wasn’t much time left to search for alternative locations I decided to make my stand here. At first I thought that perhaps I could produce something that would work in black and white, since the muted and somewhat odd colors weren’t that exciting. But things soon began to change, and over the next half hour or so the light went through an amazing series of transitions. I made this photograph while the sun was still above the edge of a fog bank that extended well off-shore. As the sun dropped the light on the water moved toward my position — you can see the area of greater illumination a bit further off in the distance. As the light approached the number and color of the close-in reflections increased, and the shadows of the sea stacks lengthened. I made a couple of landscape orientation exposures — this is one of them — before switching to portrait mode for the final images. Between the time I made this photograph and the time I made that switch — perhaps a minute or two later — the light had already changed.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.