Tag Archives: atmosphere

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

Coastline, Dusk

February 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light falls across the rugged Big Sur coastline, California

This was a very special bit of end-of-day light. Earlier we had spent about nine hours driving south between Monterey and Piedras Blancas on the Big Sur coast, stopping frequently along the way to make photographs of the beautiful winter light. At the southern end of our drive we spent time photographing the elephant seals at their “nursery” alongside the road – a popular place for observing this amazing creatures, especially at this time of year when the females are giving birth and the beach is crowded with all sorts of elephant seals: bulls, females, new babies.

Finishing here, it was time to turn the car north again and head back the way we had come. We started up the Pacific Coast Highway and very soon began the first climb into the coastal hills. We kept an eye out for potential gold hour photographic subjects. There are, of course, no shortage of them along this spectacular coastline, so we figured that we would find something no matter where we were during the last hour of light even though we had no specific plan yet. Eventually we came to a place where we had stopped earlier on the southward drive and we pulled off. Earlier, closer to the middle of the day, the light had been very bright here, illuminating coastal haze and reflecting off the ocean surface in a way that reminds me of molten metal. But now the light was lower and coming in at a more direct angle, and the atmosphere softened and the colors warmed in the late-day light. At first the light was more intense and I made a few photographs with the scene brilliantly colored. At one point I looked away to photograph something else, and when I looked back the sun had dropped behind a semi-transparent band of clouds near the horizon, significantly muting the brightness and color of the light on the base of the hills, but still leaving a few intense spots higher up.

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

Sea Stacks, Big Sur Coastline

February 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The receding ridges of the Big Sur coastline arc southward into winter haze beyond a pair of large sea stacks.

On the final day of January we did the “down and back” drive through the Big Sur area of California’s Pacific Coast Highway. This is my favorite time of year in this part of California. At one point along the drive I made a comment (as I often do while passing through here at this time of year) about how this weather felt more like a “typical summer day” than like a “typical winter day” – and then I quickly caught myself and recalled that “typical summer days” here often feature thick fog, wind, and cold. On the other hand, between Pacific storms – or during a dry year like this one – a typical winter day may feature brilliant sunshine and long vistas and temperatures that are as warm as those of summer here.

As the day developed I shifted from looking for the effects of first and early light coming over ridges and into canyons, or the thinning offshore clouds. Instead I started to think about the long coastal vistas, the intense reflection of the ocean seen from high places (which always makes me think of molten metal), and the way that the backlit atmosphere highlights receding ridges as they disappear into the distance. As we came over one of the high points and around the corner the road began to drop and this view appeared in front of us, with two sea stacks in the foreground (one of which contains a natural arch) and the rugged coastline curving toward the south.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Trees and Granite, Morning Light

January 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brilliant morning light shines on subalpine trees and receding granite ridges, Kings Canyon National Park

Back in September of 2013 a group of four photographers headed off into the backcountry of the Kings Canyon National Park Sierra Nevada for nine days. (It occurred to me today that between the four of us, we have well over a century of experience in these mountains!) We crossed a Sierra crest pass at close to 12,000′ feet, another non-crest pass that was even higher, and then landed in a lake-filled basin where we set up camp at 11,000′ for most of a week. This basin is off the main through trails and the trails that do go here essentially dead-end, so there aren’t a lot of visitors here. Because we remained in one spot we were able to get to know the landscape more intimately, looking more closely at places we might have missed if we had just been passing by on the trail, and returning to photographic subjects more than once in changing conditions and light.

Up the valley from our camp was a series of sub-alpine lakes, surrounded by the quintessential High Sierra landscape of glaciated granite, tiny meadows, small trees, and ponds and lakes. I developed an almost daily loop up towards the upper lake, coming and going by different paths, and I began to get a better sense of the personality of this place. I made this photograph by climbing up a granite spine to a high point where the terrain flattened a bit and afforded a view of the surrounding valley. This photograph was made in the morning, when low angle light was streaming across the top of the farther ridge and backlighting the trees in front of me.

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

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

January 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden evening haze over the Pacific Coast below the rugged cliffs of the Marin headlands

How we ended up here on this evening in a slightly complicated and random story. Our main goal was to go San Francisco’s De Young Museum, where the big show of David Hockney’s work was entering its final days – we had been planning to go but somehow the time passed and it was now or never. I’d write, “It is a great show and you should go…” but it is too late! Hockney’s work is engrossing and compelling and includes subjects that a landscape photographer can identify with. (Hockney’s relationship to photography is interesting and, it seems, a bit complex. He is known for some photo collages that he created, yet he disparages photography or at least the way photography is often done. He apparently said something about photography along the lines of it being fine if you want to view the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops. Ouch!)

We spent a few hours in the exhibit and then it was mid afternoon. There were still a couple of hours of light left, so we decided to head across the Golden Gate Bridge, but with only the vaguest of plans in mind. (Basically the plan consisted of “Coffee and then look for something before the light is gone.”) By the time we got over there and were ready to look for light, we realized that we had only a short time before the light would go and we would have to head back over the bridge to get dinner. (We had reservations at a favorite Indian restaurant.) We realized that we had only enough time to drive up into the headlands on our way to the bridge, so up Conzelman Road we went. I missed a mysterious and ominous photograph of a large freighter in the haze outside the Golden Gate since I wasn’t able to find a place to stop and park – but we finally managed to park the car and get out and look around. I did not take my camera gear out at first, since I have more than enough photographs of The City and the bridge at sunset, but soon I became interested in the backlit glow around the rugged cliffs dropping to the water to the west and then the expanse of glowing, hazy air stretching over the water towards the horizon, where water and sky merged invisibly.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: atmosphere

Coastline, Dusk

Sea Stacks, Big Sur Coastline

Trees and Granite, Morning Light

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

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