Tag Archives: blue

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Mono Lake, Sky and Mountains

July 23, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mono Lake, shoreline, and mountains to the east.

The landscape of the Mono Lake Basin offers tremendous diversity — everything from intimate scenes of tufas and other features, to grand landscapes stretching off far into the distance. It is even a place to photograph wildlife in the context of landscape. In the right conditions the water becomes a subtle and varied element of the landscape, too.

I recently visited here early on a summer morning. I was staying back up in the Yosemite Sierra, but I decided to drive down for one morning of “east side” photography, including the lake and then some areas further south and east. At first I wasn’t too excited by the “empty” blue sky, but when I saw it as a counterpoint to the textured blue of the lake’s water I thought it deserved a photograph.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Tufa, Sky, Passing Birds

July 21, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small flock of birds flies above tufa towers and the vast expanse of Mono Lake beneath summer morning sky

It is easy to think of the tufa towers and being the iconic features of Mono Lake, and arguably they perhaps are. They are certainly the destination for many visitors to the lake, and I have often been to them before dawn to photograph the first light striking their forms. A small group of the towers are included in this photograph, too, though I don’t feel that they are necessarily the predominant feature here.

When I think of Mono Lake, other things come to mind before the tufas. One of the first associations is the immense space encompassed by the lake itself, the larger basin that contains it, and the huge expanse of sky overhead. Very close to that are two related non-visual associations — a great stillness (interrupted only perhaps by a few birds) and a profound silence. For me, this is a place to approach quietly and without hurry.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Fog, Mist, Ocean, and Sky

July 3, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Looking westward toward the Pacific Ocean horizon and dissipating fog

I have something of an obsession with views to the west from the California coast, especially those in which details gradually fade toward and a distant and indistinct horizon. As a person whose family moved to this state when I was very young, and the son of a father who gradually worked his way west from New York through the midwest and the west to finally arrive on this coast, there is still, no doubt, at least a remnant of whatever it was that moved Americans across a continent — to arrive at its edge and look east to the unknown.

Minimalist Pacific Ocean views like this one have long intrigued me, especially when the light is extremely bright, to the point that the atmosphere glows so brightly that it almost hurts to look into it. This was an interesting day, one on which I escaped the hot inland weather to drive down the coast, where the fog was never far away. Here, at a spot high above the water, only thin remnants of the fog were present, along with a soft haze just above the water leading to a fog bank far off shore.

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

Headlands, Fog, Ocean

May 19, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Gathering fog along rugged Big Sur coastal cliffs

One more photograph from my May Day quick visit to the Big Sur Coast and the lower Monterey Peninsula. I visited fairly early in the morning — not as early as dawn, but certainly before most of the tourists showed up along this popular coast on this weekend day.

I started with a plan to visit Point Lobos — and I did later end up there — but I was distracted by the formation of thing fog right along the waterline. More typically I would expect to see thick fog in the early morning, left over from the night before, with murky conditions until some clearing happens later on. But on this morning the pattern seemed reversed. It started out clear and then as the morning wore on the weather changed and a beautiful misty quality appeared along the coast, in places leading to the formation of fog.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: blue

Mono Lake, Sky and Mountains

Tufa, Sky, Passing Birds

Fog, Mist, Ocean, and Sky

Headlands, Fog, Ocean

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