Category Archives: Photographs: Ocean & Coast

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

Rocky Shoreline, Fog, Big Sur

July 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Steep cliffs fall to the edge of the Pacific Ocean along the fog-shrouded Big Sur coastline

I left very early on this Fourth of July morning, while the streets were still nearly empty near my home, and headed south towards Monterey and the Big Sur coast. I watch weather forecasts carefully before going there this time of year. The most likely conditions are not my favorites for photography — either socked in with coastal for or else blue-sky clear. I’m looking for something in between in the summer, which ideally means that there is still some fog around but that the sun is poking through along the edges. The forecast today was one of those that is peculiar to California, with fog hugging the coast early but breaking up by midday and the temperatures in the inland areas, which are sometimes only a few miles from the foggy areas, rising into the nineties. Hoping to find that sun/fog boundary, I was willing to chance the holiday traffic, though I figured I might beat the worst of it by going there before “normal people” were awake, and then by returning at about the time the crowds would show up.

I hit fog in the Salinas Valley, which meant that the fog on the coast was likely to be a bit more obstinate about leaving than I had hoped. In fact, there was a low deck of fog perhaps only a few hundred feet above the ocean, with misty atmosphere below. This is not easy light to photograph, at least not for me, but I found a few places like this one where I could get a clear view of nearby subjects and include more distant subjects disappearing into the fog. I walked out on the bluff to find this spot, set up, and noticed that the fog was in motion, so I decided to wait, eventually spending perhaps 20 minutes waiting and watching for moments like this when the fog thinned just enough to barely reveal the further rocks and coast.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Five Ships, Abandoned Piers

July 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Five ships sit at anchor beyond abandoned piers, San Francisco Bay

This will likely be the final in this series of (mostly) black and white photographs featuring this dilapidated pier (piers, actually) along the San Francisco waterfront in the China Basin area. I’ve shared several others recently, but yesterday as I was preparing some prints for a meet-up with some fellow photographers in San Francisco, I took another look at this one and saw that it could work with a more panoramic format.

The ships parked on the horizon probably don’t suggest San Francisco to most people, but it is very common to see them moored out in the San Francisco Bay, where I imagine that they must “park” before or after being offloaded. Quite a few seem to be tankers of some sort. I’ve been intrigued by these ships for some time, and the linear arrangement of five of them on this morning, when fog and backlight made the hills on the other side of the Bay disappear, almost seems a bit mysterious. The piers are also fascinating. They have obviously been there for a long time and just as obviously have been allowed to deteriorate to the point that portions seem to have simply fallen into the water, and it looks like the Bay will ultimately reclaim all of them.

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

Rocky Shoreline, Pacific Ocean

June 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sandstone shoreline rocks along the Pacific Ocean coast at Point Lobos State Reserve

I’ve been sitting on this photograph for some time, perhaps because it isn’t exactly a spectacular scene but more of a familiar and subtle one with personal connections. During a busy period earlier this spring I had not been able to find time to photograph my favorite subjects for a few weeks and I was itching to get out… so I simply headed out one morning to this familiar location.

I’ve been going to Point Lobos for decades, since I was a very young child and my family would make day trips down there. In those days we would explore rocks just like these —in fact, they may have been these very rocks — and investigate nearby tide pools. On this spring morning there were few other visitors, perhaps because of the high cloudiness that was making the day almost a bit gray and softening in the light.

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

Big Sur Coast, Winter

June 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter haze and sun along California’s Big Sur coast

This is another photograph that looks backwards to January of this year, in the middle of passed for a California winter in this drought year. The photograph is of a favorite section of the Pacific Coast Highway as it passes along and sometimes high above the Pacific Ocean shoreline.

This is a magical place and time of year. In this section of the coast, the ridges dropping down the sea curve so far into the distant haze that they eventually seem to simply disappear. During this winter season when it is still mostly cold, you may find yourself in a windless spot high above the ocean and feel an almost summer-like warmth. Since the coast curves inward as it arcs south, in many places it is possible to look almost directly south over the water, and on hazy days like this one the sun reflects brilliantly off the molten surface of the ocean.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Rocky Shoreline, Fog, Big Sur

Five Ships, Abandoned Piers

Rocky Shoreline, Pacific Ocean

Big Sur Coast, Winter

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