Category Archives: Photographs: Ocean & Coast

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

Pacific Ocean, Evening Sky and Fog

June 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Thin evening fog clouds drift above the Pacific Ocean along the California coastline.

This is a favorite sort of view of mine along California’s coastline – a calm (almost) summer evening near dusk, but only a few wisps of fog trying to collect themselves along the shoreline, but not quite making it. So much of what I photograph has at least some green in it – so this palette limited to shades of blue and pink seems special.

Although it was not quite so still when I made this photograph – I was along the edge of a bluff not far from the highway – the visual image captures for me the feeling of timelessness that I sometimes experience at the coast. I’ve lived in these areas almost my entire life, so I’m no stranger to the coast and beaches. (Though I continue to see and learn new things. But most such experiences are tied to roads and parking lots and even to urban areas. A few years ago, believe it or not, I had a very different experience with the ocean when I walked perhaps four miles to a point along the sheltered waters of Point Reyes, and coming to the coast on foot I felt, for the first time at the ocean, this sense of deep time and I felt that what I was seeing had probably changed little, if at all, in millennia. I can literally count the number of times that I’ve had the profound realization, and I was alone on each occasion – the Point Reyes experience, on a still evening away from camp above timberline in the Upper Kern River region of the Southern Sierra, and on one memorable day on my first (two-week!) solo backpacking trip when I found myself sitting on top of a 12,000′ Sierra pass for several hours.

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: Ocean & Coast

Beach and Rocks

June 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon light on a rocky beach near Pescadero, California

Last week I finally was able to get out and do a bit of landscape photography along the California coast south of San Francisco. (Various other obligations and activities have minimized time in the field recently, and may continue to do so for a few more weeks – but then… lots of time “in the field!”) This area is one of my quickest “gotta get out and shoot” locations, as I can be there in less than an hour, and “there” is one of the most spectacular coastlines I can imagine, ranging from calm and peaceful to towering cliffs and raging surf.

On this visit, things were relatively quiet – nothing like the winter surf of a few months ago. My hope was to find a coastal location in that border zone between fog and sunlight, where interesting and variable things can often happen with light. Starting from the Santa Cruz area, where it was almost perfectly clear, we headed north while keeping a watch on the fog bank hanging just off shore and appearing to get closer to the coast to the north. Eventually, near the Pigeon Point lighthouse, it looked like we might get to the point where the fog and the coast converged, but as soon as we arrived the fog pulled back a bit. In this late afternoon photograph, the sun was low enough that its light was beginning to be somewhat softened and warmed by passing through the thin layer of mist and fog.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Launch For Hire Building

June 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The “Launch For Hire” building, docks, and Tomales Bay as remnants of morning fog drift above the water

I shared a color version of this photograph back in March, not too long after I made the photograph. The building is an old wooden structure that sits on pilings above the waters of Tomales Bay, and is probably familiar (especially with its “LAUNCH FOR HIRE” sign) to almost anyone who passes by on the way to Point Reyes. In fact, that is precisely where I was headed. I had gone up there quite early, hoping to arrive early enough to be at Drakes Bay for sunrise. However, other sites along the way distracted me, and after I finished photographing them I found myself delayed, and the sun was rising over the Marin County hills as I drove around the bay. This photograph was made a few minutes later, after the very first light had already come and gone.

The “black and white or color?” question is a new one for those of us who started out photographing on film “back in the day.” Some of you reading this no doubt think that this context is obvious, but in a world in which some actually don’t understand, for example, how a rotary dial telephone worked, this context will likely soon become as unfamiliar as using a horse and buggy. Whether to shoot color or black and white was, only a bit more than a decade ago, a decision what was made well before clicking the shutter. Put black and white film in the camera and shoot black and white, or put color media in the camera and shoot color. (In most cases – with sheet film it was possible to choose, though that didn’t tend to be the work process of such photographers.) Now we have the odd advantage – or, sometimes, the burden – of having to decide based on the nature of the subject and how we see it. Quite a few photographers using digital media will tell you that they don’t always know for sure whether a shot will work best in black and white or color at the time of exposure. (Sometimes you do, but not always.) So we “capture” the scene in color and put off the final decision until the post-processing stage. Even there it can occasionally be hard to decide. This was one of those cases – and both the color and black and white versions live on for now.

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

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

June 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Huge winter surf breaks over rocky coastal islands along California’ Big Sur Coastline.

In mid-January waves of stupendous size came ashore along the California coastline, as they do at times every winter. The surf was caused by storms, but not storms that were at all visible here in California, where this was an unusually warm and sunny weekend, with clear skies and temperatures (in January!) in the low seventy degree range. As I understand it, the source of the large waves was a big Pacific storm far to the north, in the region of the Aleutian Islands, which was sending huge swells thousands of miles toward our coastline.

The news reports were making a big deal of so-called “sneaker waves” – huge waves that seemingly appear unexpectedly and sometimes wash over areas that might seem safe. Sometimes the reports overdo this sort of thing, but the warnings are justified, and this was especially the case during this occurrence. We were even surprised a bit ourselves. When we finally made it to this area along the Big Sur coast that is open to the ocean, we expected to see huge surf, but when we pulled over and looked it didn’t seem like anything all that extraordinary was happening. Yes, there were waves, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. However, as we grabbed gear and tripods and walked to an overlook on a bluff above the water a series of truly huge waves began to come ashore. It turns out that this pattern alternates periods of smaller waves with periodic intervals of much larger waves, and we certainly saw abundant evidence as gigantic waves completely overwhelmed these rocky offshore islands before continuing on to hit the shoreline and wash far up the beaches.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Pacific Ocean, Evening Sky and Fog

Beach and Rocks

Launch For Hire Building

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

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