Tag Archives: bay

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Morning Clouds, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay

March 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Light shining through layers of morning clouds over San Francisco Bay silhouettes the hills of Angel Island near Richardson Bay.

I can be a bit of a creature of habit when it comes to shooting in certain locations that I’m very familiar with. But the habit isn’t so much shooting the same thing – though that can be part of it – as it is being attentive to how the familiar thing might present itself in ways I have not previously seen. This photograph is a case in point.

I was on my way to a location north of the Golden Gate where I frequently photograph, so I know the route well and have a routine that I frequently follow – it involves where I’m heading, what time I plan to get there, and the route I typically follow. Along the way there are several places where I almost always pause long enough to look around and see if a familiar scene might look different. At a location where my route follows a short ridge line, I often stop and look back across Richardson Bay towards Angel Island and, beyond that, the waterfront of Oakland and then the East Bay hills. On this recent morning, a weak weather front was washing out as it arrived in the Bay Area and, as a result, there were many layers of clouds stacked up to the east. While the sun was able to shine through and light the surface of San Francisco Bay beyond the boats anchored in Richardson Bay, there was haze in the atmosphere that obscured details even on relatively close Angel Island, and in the sky above and beyond there were layers of fog, lower clouds, and the highest clouds of the weather front.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

San Francisco, Winter Evening

February 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.

On New Year’s Day 2012, we joined a group of “photo walkers” who were shooting some of the old military structures high in the Marin Headlands area across the Golden Gate and north of San Francisco. After meeting up with all of them and photographing these interesting old sites, we left them as they went off to photograph Rodeo Beach. (We realized that we would need to get back home a bit earlier since my plan was to leave for six days in Death Valley the next morning… and I had not yet packed!)

Since we were already in the area, we took a quick detour up to the Hawk Hill area high on Conzelman Road to check out that famous view across the Golden Gate Bridge toward San Francisco and points beyond. I don’t go here every time I’m in the area, but if I’m already there, it is about to be sunset, I have an extra half hour, and there is the potential for interesting light… what the heck! Once we got there I noticed that some winter haze was distinctly softening the light as the sun was just about to set, and this created a beautiful glowing gradient of colors in the sky and washed the City in pastel light. In this photograph I resisted the temptation to pump things (contrast and saturation) a lot, and intend tried to maintain the subtle coloration of the scene.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Winter Tree

January 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A winter-dormant tree is backlit by morning sun in the grasslands of the Calero Hills, California.

This tree and I are old friends at this point. (If you were to snoop around enough at my web site you might find other photographs of the same tree.) It is at a local county park where I have hiked for many years, and it is not far from the parking lot at the park, sitting on the far side of a small pond and somewhat inaccessible. So I almost always pass it at the start of any hike there, and I have photographed it in just about any conditions that you can imagine: summer heat, morning, evening, fog…

I hadn’t been there for a while, but I managed to find time for a short hike on Christmas Eve day this year. The trail approaches the small pond near the tree by ascending up a very shallow valley. There are thick reeds growing around the pond, and often an egret can be found at the lake. With that possibility in mind, I usually approach the pond slowly and quietly and often with my long lens already on the camera. I did so on this day… but no egret! The water level was very low after a fall season with almost no rain, so there were few birds there at all. But at just about the time I arrived the sun was beginning to peak over a nearby hill and it was back-lighting this tree against the still shaded grass-covered hillside beyond.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

America’s Pastime

January 2, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Baseball fans along the outer walkways of San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park, with scoreboard, commercial messages, and twilight sky.

This photograph comes from a couple of years ago, and is one that I “found” again recently during a scan though a half dozen or so years worth of old files. I tend to be rather cautious about deleting old files, but I finally decided that some of the older files really not worth keeping – and the side benefit of cleaning out some of the photographic cobwebs is that I often rediscover photographs that I had forgotten.

We go to a few San Francisco Giants games every season. While I like the baseball, other things also draw my attention. In addition to the garlic fries and beer (!), AT&T Park also provides a lot of interesting photographic opportunities. At some point during every game I tend to just wander around the facility and see what might make an interesting photograph. Most often I use the elevated vantage points around the park to photograph San Francisco and the Bay, but sometimes I also photograph subjects within the stadium, too.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: bay

Morning Clouds, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay

San Francisco, Winter Evening

Winter Tree

America’s Pastime

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