Tag Archives: blue

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

Surf, Bluff, Sea Stacks

May 15, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Surf, a steep bluff, and sea stacks lead toward a foggy horizon, Big Sur Coast

I sometimes forget how long this coast has been a part of my consciousness, but a visit or two quickly remind me. I have lived in the San Francisco Bay area since I was four-years-old. Weekend and summer visits to the Monterey Bay beaches and the tide pools of Point Lobos were regular events, and the effect of those visits remains all these years later — and all it takes is a quick visit to remind me of what it means to live this close to the Pacific Ocean.

On this first day of May I made a morning visit to the upper Big Sur coast, getting to some of the best parts before the inevitable weekend crowds arrived. It was a beautiful day, at first looking like it might turn out to be “yet another blue sky day,” but soon becoming more interesting, at least from the photographic point of view, as thin fog began to form just about the meeting of the ocean and land. When I made this photograph looking south down the coastline, it was still early enough that the bluffs and coastal mountains cast shadows along the surf line.

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: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron

May 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great blue heron stands next to a Sacramento Valley pond

As I prepare photographs to share via social media (in my continuing photo-a-day marathon, now perhaps the years old) I often have photographs lined up for posting days or weeks in the future. Occasionally one sits here on the computer for a long time before I finally share it. This photograph of a great blue heron is such a photograph — I made it almost four months ago, way back when we were in the middle of winter!

This past winter I decided to expand the range of my bird photography a bit. I’ve been photographing winter birds in Central California for the past few years, but mostly in a range from roughly Sacramento south. So it was time to connect a few dots on the map and travel out of that area a bit. One of the first extended visits took me a good distance up the Sacramento Valley on a cold winter day when snow topped the mountains to both the east and west. This specimen was hanging out along an irrigation ditch near the edge of a wildlife refuge, and it allowed me to get relatively close (“hidden” inside a vehicle) without taking flight.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Alpine Pond, Evening

March 23, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening reflections in a boulder-strewn alpine pond, Sequoia National Park

This pack trip, now almost a decade behind me, was a different sort of trip in several ways. We began on the east side of the range in a high valley south of Mount Whitney. This was in an area that we had visited in the past, and on one occasions I spent several days going up and down an unmaintained pass until we finally all got together and climbed a nearby 14,000′ peak. On the trip where I made the photograph we started out at the same trailhead but then skirted a bit south to cross the crest on a more popular trail. A bit further along to the west we left the main trail to visit a nearby lake, found a cross-country route out of its cirque, walked up a long valley to another lake, and camped there. I made the photograph on the evening of our arrival, looking back at tall ridges lining the valley we had ascended to get here.

There rest of the trip was unusual and special, too. On the next morning we skirted the lake and then headed up to find an unmarked route over a steep pass, dropping down abruptly from its summit into a long granite valley with several lakes. A day later we arrived at the usual west side route towards Mount Whitney. We stopped for lunch and moved on, heading north on the John Muir Trail. Eventually we crossed one of my favorite high spots along this trail and then descended to the junction with the trail over Shepherds Pass. We hung out in this area for a few days, investigating some more remote areas of the Upper Kern drainage before returning to this spot and then heading out over Shepherd Pass.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Granite Cliffs, Alpine Lake

March 20, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

As I write this tonight for posting tomorrow, winter is over and spring is a few hours old. It is perhaps for that reason — the start of spring and the inevitability of summer — that I found myself looking though some old photograph files from a summer about eight years in the past. There is a practical reason to revisit the old files from time to time; I often find photographs that now look pretty interesting that I apparently skipped over originally, for one reason or another. But it is also an opportunity to revisit the older memories as well, since looking at the photographs brings back the recall of many other details of such Sierra trips.

On this trip I crossed the Southern Sierra from west to east with a small group of long-time trail friends. I am not sure why, but I had not been back on this trail in the decades since my first visit — so I was excited to revisit this spectacular route. Today I began tracking the progress of the trip via the old photographs, starting on the first day and looking at photograph up through day three, when we climbed from a beautiful lake to cross the Kaweah Mountains and head east. I came to this photograph, which is a vertical orientation interpretation on a scene in another of my photographs that may be somewhat recognizable. At the time when I made the original print I think I must have committed to the horizontal format and, thus, put the vertical on the back burner. but today I decided that I like this version, too, with a bit less emphasis on the water and a bit more on the vertical thrust of the rocky walls.

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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

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: blue

Surf, Bluff, Sea Stacks

Great Blue Heron

Alpine Pond, Evening

Granite Cliffs, Alpine Lake

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