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

Gulls, Pacific Grove Shoreline, Monterey Bay

January 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Hundreds of gulls line the rocks of the Pacific Grove shoreline with the waters of Monterey Bay beyond.

I was tempted to call this “Lotsa’ Gulls,” but I’ll stick to my more typical descriptive naming scheme. As we drove along the coastline near Pacific Grove we came to one particular section where hundreds or perhaps thousands of gulls were perched all along the shoreline rocks. As soon as any would start to leave, another huge flock would arrive from somewhere else to take their place. I had not seen so many clustered together in such a small area right on the shoreline before.

The shot looks back into Monterey and towards the large dunes that ring in near the town of Monterey. Beyond are the hills at the lower end of the Salinas River Valley, just barely starting their annual transition from tan to greener-than-you-can-believe. One rather unique feature of this part of California is that, unlike colder states, the greenest season starts in the middle of winter, especially in rainy years like this one, and extends into about late April or so. One of the oddest juxtapositions, and we saw it later this day while driving back to the Santa Clara Valley, contains the last brown or yellow leaves of fall on trees standing above the new green grasses.

This photograph is 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

Big Sur Coastline at Bixby Creek, Winter

January 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A winter storm approaches the bluffs of the Big Sur coastline at Bixby Creek.

This is, as you may have noticed, the same scene as that in yesterday’s photograph – but this time in portrait mode and composed to focus on the receding edge of the land as it meets the winter sea off of the Big Sur coast. To recap, it was raining lightly and blowing hard enough to almost knock me over when I made this photograph. The wind was coming straight at my camera position out of the south. Since I figured my tripod would probably blow right over in one of the gusts, I decided to use a “natural tripod” and instead drape myself over a conveniently placed boulder and brace the camera on the top of the rock.

This is a wild section of the coastline that forces the coast highway to ascend well above the steep shoreline bluffs and cliffs. I am intrigued by the rock pile that has slid off the face of the tall cliff at the left and collected along the beach in front of and beyond the cave at the waterline. I was surprised to see a small number of footprints in the sand on this little beach!

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Community, Ideas, Photographers

Help Michael Frye Decide – His “Best of 2010” Photographs

January 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Michael Frye has borrowed – with my blessings! – my idea of asking readers, photographers, and photography fans to help with the process of determining which photographs should end up in his “Best of 2010” list.

I did something similar when coming up with my 2010 Favorites list – I asked readers to give me their feedback on which of my photographs spoke to them, and I used that feedback to edit the list down a bit and then to determine the order in which the photos would be posted. Michael has set a more difficult task for his readers. Out of his large selection of very wonderful photographs – at least a couple of which have “iconic” potential – he wants to end up with a list of his best 10.

Wander on over there and take a look at his wonderful collection of photographs – and good luck trying to limit yourself to only 10! I took a look earlier today, realized it was going to be too difficult to eliminate that many in order to come up with a small list, and decided to come back later. While you are visiting his site, be sure to poke around a bit. There is a lot of other great stuff there. In addition to his photography, I recommend looking at his reviews of readers’ photographs and at his “how to” videos.

While I have your attention, I want to echo one thing that Michael wrote in his post: “… the judge—me—gets a say too, so if one of my favorites gets panned by everyone else I may still include it. But as one of my photographer friends, Clinton Smith, once said, we don’t get to pick our best images—the world does. So your votes will carry a lot of weight.”

Like Michael, I did “get the final say,” but I strongly agree that we are often the least able to judge the potential success of our photographs. Sometimes I know that a photograph will communicate with others, but very often (more often, perhaps?) I am surprised by the positive feedback I get on a photograph that wasn’t necessarily one of my very favorites and by the fact that my favorites are often not the ones that speak to others. I had to swallow hard and remove a couple from my initial “favorites” list when they didn’t get much response – but I am always very interested to see what the reactions are, and I learned a lot by considering your votes and reading your comments. (My own personal favorite among my photographs was not selected as the “readers’ favorite,” but I was relieved to see that it at least did pretty well! :-)

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

Coastal Bluff, Big Sur, Winter

January 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Steep coastal bluffs rise about the winter surf along the Big Sur coastline near Bixby Creek.

This photograph was made on a New Years Day drive down part of the Big Sur coastline, on an afternoon when a powerful Pacific winter storm was approaching the coast. It was raining lightly as I shot this scene, and the wind was blowing so hard that I decided to forgo using a tripod (it would have blown over!) and instead crouch down on top of a boulder and manually brace the camera against the rock. If you look closely at the surface of the water you can see the effects of the gusts of high wind blowing toward my position. Not surprisingly, I think the photograph has a bit more of a “brooding” character than the typical shot from this location right next to iconic Bixby Bridge.

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