Category Archives: Photographs: Ocean & Coast

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.

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

Young Elephant Seals

May 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A group of young elephant seals along the California coast

Back in mid-February we took a day to make a very long looping drive from the San Francisco Bay Area down to almost Morro Bay and then back up the coast highway along the Big Sur coastline. The plan was to both visit the elephant seal areas near the southern end of this drive and to also look for landscape photography opportunities. Starting out early in the morning, it looked like the rainy weather to our north might not follow us south… but we were wrong. It was cloudy the whole way down, and when we arrived at this coastal elephant seal “nursery” it rained intermittently. Sometimes rain can be wonderful for landscape photography, but somehow this rain wasn’t quite playing out that way, so we focused on the wildlife instead. (Later, the weather did offer up some very interesting light as the weather began to break further up the coast.)

The area where I photographed these elephant seals is a well-known one right along the highway and, as expected, there were quite a few other people there to get close up looks at these impressive creatures. At this time of year there are large bulls, nursing mothers, young animals (that appear to me to be more or less adolescents), and nursing pups. Compared to certain times of the year when the bulls are jousting and fighting, things seemed rather calm. For the most part the seals seemed to largely be lounging around on the sand. We walked the opposite direction from the large crowd and found some good overlooks from which the seals could easily be photographed with long lenses. In places there were groups of these younger animals clustered closely together, presenting an image that seemed anthropomorphically “cute.” But don’t be fooled – these are pretty tough creatures that seem to lead a tough and challenging life.

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

Shoreline Trees and Mist

May 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Silhouettes of shoreline trees on a misty morning at Tomales Bay, California

This photograph was made along the shoreline of Tomales Bay, near Inverness, California and north of San Francisco very near to the Point Reyes National Seashore. I was there, in fact, to visit Point Reyes. As I passed through the Inverness area, the sun rose over the fog-shrouded hills of Marin County, and I decided to stop right there, short of my actual goal, and make some photographs in this interesting early morning light.

Looking to my left and toward the northern entrance to Tomales Bay, everything was front- or side-lit, the sun shone brightly, colors were intense, and the fog was clearing. Looking to my right, I was facing directly into the rising sun and seeing it through the misty remnants of fog along the Marin hills, and the colors were washed out by the atmosphere and bright light. I used a long lens to pick out this row of shoreline trees from the larger landscape and to be able to make a photograph that excluded the sun itself. But it was still very bright. Mist rises off of the foreground water of the bay and a bit of fog still lurks beyond the trees. To look at this photograph you might think you are seeing a monochrome image that has been sepia toned… but this is the actual color of the light in these conditions.

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

Fog and Forested Ridges

May 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog envelops forested ridges near Mount Tamalpais on the Pacific coast north of San Francisco

I photographed this scene on an early February day when the atmosphere was especially murky north of San Francisco. I had traveled this way for the day with some very general ideas about photographic subjects, but once I got “there” quite a few of those ideas looked a lot less promising. I had initially thought about photographing inside the coastal redwood forest, but when I arrived at my intended location I found that everything was gray, gray, gray! The atmosphere was hazy and murky and high clouds blocked any interesting light from the sun. So figured I might try for something moody along the coast, but there I found the same very difficult light.

I finally headed back up into the Marin hills, hoping that I might get up above the thickest of the gray and possibly get some light filtered through the high clouds and perhaps some longer views. As I entered the Mount Tamalpais State Park and started to ascend the road toward the peak, I finally came out of the coastal fog – though the overhead clouds remained. As I went up this road I looked for spots with some sort of longer view of the fog bank from which I had just emerged, and I finally found it along a bend where the road passed an area of open meadows and rolling hills. Here there was a line of sight back toward the ocean – completely obscured by fog – and the bits of lower hills that were poking through the tops of the clouds. On a technical note, this is not a monochrome or black and white photograph. It is, however, somewhat desaturated. One of the side effects of this difficult atmosphere was a very blue quality to the light that became much more apparent in the photograph than it appeared to a viewer on the scene. I knew I would have to deal with this in post in order to get an effect that seemed appropriate and believable. My initial thinking was to actually make it a black and white photograph, but as I worked with the image I came to feel that it worked better if some degree of muted color was retained.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

Shoreline Trees and Mist

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