Tag Archives: big

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

Monterey Pines, Fog

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Monterey Pines, Fog
Monterey Pines, Fog

Monterey Pines, Fog. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. July 10, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Monterey Pines growing along cliff tops on the north shore of Point Lobos State Reserve with Carmel coastline visible in the distance.

These beautiful and tough Monterey Cypress trees grow at the edges of cliffs above the Pacific Ocean along the north shore of Point Lobos, and on this foggy morning the outline of the Carmel shoreline was just barely visible beyond them. The light was difficult, but I think it ended up helping produce a very moody image that, for me, evokes that feeling of walking though this area on such a morning.

I’m one of those strange people who is usually a bit disappointed when the weather here is clear! In fact, I’ll change my mind and decide not to go photograph at Point Lobos if I hear it is going to be a beautiful blue sky day. My ideal is a day with fog or clouds or rain, and especially so if there is a chance that a bit of light might try to break through clearing (or arriving) clouds.

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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.

Equipment, Technique

Yet Another Reason to Like Live View – Shooting in the Wind

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I have posted in the past about some of the advantages of having a live view feature on your camera, especially for the types of photography that I do using my Canon 5DII. This past week I discovered another use, and an unexpected one at that – shooting in conditions of gusty winds.

I most often work from the tripod, and I usually use a pretty large and stable tripod in the context of shooting a full frame DSLR camera. But in some very windy conditions putting the camera on a tripod is not sufficient to stop camera motion and the consequent blur. This is especially a problem when you are shooting in low light or otherwise need to use very long exposure times, and it becomes worse when using long lenses which will catch more wind and magnify vibrations. There are a bunch of tricks that you can try in order to keep the camera steady, but in really strong winds the camera is just going to move, especially if you have a very large lens attached.

One way I try to deal with this is to time my exposures for moments when the wind may momentarily decrease. This can require a lot of patience – sometimes I’ve had to wait several minutes for a very brief halt to the gale, during which I try to make my exposure. But even in this case, you have to make sure that the camera vibration stops completely if you are using a long lens. Ultimately, you have to simply trust that the camera really has stabilized since there is no way to tell directly. Last week, as I was using live view to focus a 400mm lens on a distant subject and again noting that 400mm plus 10x software zoom in live view makes the camera very sensitive to vibration. In the past I have noted this mainly in the context of how darn hard it is to manually focus a big lens this way! But this time it occurred to me that I could use this in my favor.

With the 10x live view magnification enabled, the display is very sensitive to camera motion from the wind. I realized that by leaving the camera in the 10x magnification setup after composing the shot that I could simply watch this display, with its magnification of motion, and wait until the image stabilized during lulls in the wind to take my shots. If the display isn’t bouncing at 10x, motion blur is not going to be an issue. Problem solved. More or less.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Confluence of Cascade and Tamarack Creeks

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Confluence of Cascade and Tamarack Creeks
Confluence of Cascade and Tamarack Creeks

Confluence of Cascade and Tamarack Creeks. Yosemite National Park, California. January 16, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Long exposure in evening light of the boulder-strewn confluence of Cascade and Tamarack Creeks, Yosemite National Park.

Right below the bridge along the Crane Flat Road (often described as highway 120) route into Yosemite Valley, two wildly cascading creeks join together before their final descent to the bottom of the canyon where they join with the Merced River. Cascade Creek is probably the better known of the two since some spectacular sections of its descent are clearly visible right above the roadway. Tamarack Creek is easier to miss since you have to look carefully into the trees if you try to spot it from your car, or else get out of the car and look more closely. In the photograph, Cascade Creek flows away from the bottom of the frame, and Tamarack joins from the right in the upper portion of the frame.

I’ve always paid more attention to the section of Cascade Creek that is above the bridge. However, after recently having several opportunities to carefully (and admiringly) view Charlie Cramer’s stunning print of his “Cascade Creek, Spring, Yosemite”, I decided that I really needed to look off the other side of this bridge! (Charlie, I found your rocks. First, I’m even more impressed now that I realize how obscure and out of the way the subject of your photograph is. Second, how the heck did you position the camera over the side of the bridge to make that photograph!?) With that in mind, I visited this spot several times on this weekend trip to Yosemite and tried photographing it in different types of light.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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

Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Creek, Winter

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Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Creek, Winter
Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Creek, Winter

Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Creek, Winter. Pacific Ocean, California. January 1, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Light winter rain falls on the rugged Big Sur coastline near Bixby Creek.

This is one more – and perhaps the final – photograph from New Years Day 2011 along the Big Sur coast line. While this is perhaps not your chamber of commerce picture perfect day, it is my kind of Big Sur day. As I made the photograph the wind was absolutely howling – so strong that I couldn’t really use my tripod, so I instead hand held the camera and braced it and myself against a very large boulder. To make things even more “fun,” it was trying very hard to rain!

The location is precisely at the spot where many of the iconic photographs of Bixby Bridge are made, at the north end of the bridge. However, on this day I thought that the subdued tones of the winter ocean and cliffs were more interesting, so I framed my photographs to avoid including the bridge.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email

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.