Tag Archives: bay

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

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

April 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Pacific Coast Highway winds along the rugged California Big Sur coastline at Bixby Bridge

This is a pretty classic view of the California coastline, including a well-known section of the Pacific Coast Highway (route 1) below Monterey in the northern section of the Big Sur coast. Shot from high on bluffs above the ocean, where the highway climbs to one of its high points, the photograph looks north up the coast across pastureland on the foreground bluff towards the famous Bixby Bridge, located in the surf-filled cove just beyond. More bluffs and ridges dropping to the sea fade into the distant haze beyond that.

This was a beautiful spring day, so I got up very early and was in the Monterey area as the sun came up. The conditions were not quite what I expected. I knew that it was supposed to be windy, so I was expecting very clear conditions. The sky was clear of clouds, but there was quite a bit of low atmospheric haze – it almost looked like it wanted to be fog but couldn’t quite get it together to form clouds. This light does difficult things to colors, but it also creates an interesting contrast between the relatively clear closer objects and further subjects desaturated by the haze. It was also windy – very windy by the time I stopped shooting late in the morning.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Alcatraz, Sunrise

March 25, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Alcatraz Island silhouetted against reflected sunrise light on San Francisco Bay

On this morning I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge heading north around dawn, on my way to redwoods and the coast. As I cross the bridge I’m always on the lookout for potentially interesting conditions of light or atmosphere or interesting things happening on the bay. Having heard a weather forecast of “no fog,” I was a bit surprised to find… fog in the hills on the north side of the bridge, along with a slightly opaque atmosphere over the bay. I wouldn’t call that “fog” exactly – more like “could have been fog if the wind had blown a different direction or the temperature had been a bit colder.” In any case, it was an interesting development – more interesting to me than the potential for perfectly clear air.

So I left highway 101 on the north side of the bridge and detoured briefly up into the Marin Headlands, not sure what my subject might be but certain that the light looked interesting. I started to wander out to a spot where a view across the “Gate” is found, but didn’t get that far. Instead, I found interesting light in other directions – down toward Sausalito, across the Bay toward the Embarcadero and the Bay Bridge and, as in this photograph, Alcatraz. By good fortune it happened that on this morning the reflection of the rising sun was just in line with the left edge of the island. This light is almost too bright to look at, but with a long lens and the right exposure the camera can look at it just fine! The water tower on the island casts a shadow on the reflections in front of Alcatraz, and beyond the flat area of Treasure Island is visible, with even more reflective bay water beyond that. Oakland and the East Bay hills and shoreline are completely lost in the golden haze.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Window and Rusted Chimney

March 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

During the first weekend of 2013 I joined a bunch of Bay Area photographers who were taking part in a “long exposure photo walk,” shooting with this group at dawn near the Golden Gate Bridge and then later in the morning at this historic location. China Camp was, as I understand it, a shrimp fishing village established on the shoreline of the northern San Francisco Bay in the 1800s by immigrants from China. It has long since been abandoned and now is part of a California state park. It seems mostly like a place of quiet and solitude these days, and the most common sounds during my visit were the cries of shore birds.

A few buildings, some apparently reconstructed or restored, remain from the original village. They sit right along the shoreline in a shallow cove with an open view across the northern bay. I had beautiful soft light on this visit, as a Pacific winter storm was just beginning to clear, leaving it its wake plenty of atmospheric moisture and cloudiness. I photographed the very weathered side of this building as that light vacillated between cloudy gray and nearly full sun, catching this shot as some sun shone through, though softened a bit by the clouds.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Love Window, China Camp

March 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Opaque window and door of a weathered wooden building at China Camp, California

There are any number of places with name “China Camp” (or similar variations), but this one is located along the shores of the northern San Francisco Bay. I’m not an expert on the history of the place by any means, but I understand that the village was established by immigrants from China in the 1800s and was, over a century ago, a thriving village of several hundred people who focused on harvesting shrimp. Today it is part of a California State park and can be a very quiet and peaceful place.

I visited for the first time this winter, along with a number of other photographers who went there as part of a “photo walk.” After photographing some nearby landscape subjects I walked over to the remaining buildings from the old village and spent some time poking around the area looking for photographs. While I think of this as a sort of ghost town, unlike some other such places in California, this one includes some modern improvements and restoration and even some museum facilities. I was intrigued by some windows and doors on the exterior of this wooden building, including this four-pane window on which someone had inscribed the word “love.”

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: bay

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

Alcatraz, Sunrise

Window and Rusted Chimney

Love Window, China Camp

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