Tag Archives: county

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.

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: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trillium Flowers, Redwood Forest

March 8, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Trillium flowers bloom beneath the redwood forest, Northern California.

This is another in what is likely to be a series of photographs of trillium blooms in the redwood forest just north of San Francisco. On this morning I arrived before the crowds that often come across the Golden Gate to visit this nearby forest, and I walked into the redwood groves while there was still a relatively small number of people. Despite this being a very dry winter, some recent rains had moistened things up a bit and there was a fair amount of water around – and it almost seemed like plants that had been waiting for water were now making up for lost time.

At first I didn’t see too many trillium plants or flowers, but as I walked I began to come across more of them. A hike on a side-trail that traversed a hillside brought me to many more flowers, and in a few places they were thick enough and close enough together that I could include groups of them in the frame. Here I put on a very wide angle lens, and shot from a very close distance at a large aperture so that I could include this row of flowers and throw the background of the forest floor out of focus.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Creek, Late Winter

March 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden light reflects on the muddy winter flow of Redwood Creek as it flows over boulders and new late-winter growth.

Even in this dry year in Northern California, there is finally water running in the creeks of the redwood forests. I arrived fairly early on this early March day, looking for trillium flowers. (Although they are not the subject of this photograph, I did find those flowers later on this visit.) As I walked up the trail to enter this park, the sun had risen but it was too early for its light to make it down to the forest floor or to the creek. However, the reflected light of the sun hitting trees high overhead was turning the water a sort of golden brown color, which contrasted in a striking way with the bluish light on the rocks and in some of the shaded areas of the water. New spring (though that season was still several weeks away) growth was coming up everywhere, including in shallow areas of the creek such as this one.

Because I could not get right down to the creek here, I actually photographed this with a fairly long telephoto lens. I had to look around carefully to find a spot where there was enough of a break in the foreground vegetation to provide me with a gap to shoot through. I was also lucky that the plants were not moving a lot in the creek, since the exposure time was surprisingly long – there isn’t a lot of light down in the bottom a canyon through the redwood forest!

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trillium Plant and Flower

March 6, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A trillium plant blooms during late winter in the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument.

I somehow missed the trillium bloom in the Northern California redwood forests last year, so this year I was determined to make it back again at the right time. (That time is essentially the first week or so on March.) Since I had plans to be out and about doing night photography later in the day, I decided to start early and head to redwood forests north of San Francisco to see what I could find. I was a bit concerned since it has been quite a dry winter in California.

Fortunately, it seems that a few recent light rains have been enough to get the early spring growth going. Where a week or two ago almost everything was brown, this week there were signs of green grasses and some wildflowers starting to appear. While the redwood forest was not a downright soggy as it usually is at the beginning of March, it was wet enough to start a few small streams flowing. At first I did not see as many trillium and other seasonal plants as I hoped to see, but then I noticed a couple of things. First, some plants seem like they may be on a slightly delayed schedule this year. Second, as I continued to walk and look more carefully I was able to find quite a few of these trillium flowers.

A bit of advice if you try to photograph trillium plants and flowers… The blooms seem to come and go rather quickly, so don’t delay if you are looking to photograph them or you’ll find only the triple leaf plants and no flowers. The floor of the redwood forest is a “busy” place, with lots of different plants and the textures of dead and fallen plant material. Photographing flowers against this background takes a bit of care or the flowers will be lost against the complex backdrop. Shooting rather early or late, when little direct sunlight makes it to down through the trees is a good idea – the light in the shadows is softer and less harsh and you can use large apertures to blur the background.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: county

Morning Clouds, Angel Island, San Francisco Bay

Redwood Creek, Late Winter

Trillium Plant and Flower

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