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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Two Bushes , San Francisco Home

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San Francisco Photograph - Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.
Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.

Two Bushes, San Francisco Home. San Francisco, California. July 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.

I can’t say with certainly just where in San Francisco I photographed this building, though I think it may have been in the North Beach neighborhood. To me it seemed like a superficially very simply building that turns out to be a lot more complex, and a just plain interesting example of a lot of surprising juxtapositions of shape and color.

Everything initially seems almost boringly “square” – the shapes on the garage door, the sections of the sidewalk in front of the garage, the abrupt and jutting shape of the upper story extension that leans out over the front entrance and the garage, the odd little window at the upper left, and the two symmetrically placed bushes in front of the garage and the front door. But with a little bit closer look, certain things seem to be off just a bit. Someone must have faced a difficult decision when the bushes grew too tall – whether to chop off the top of the one on the right and maintain the symmetry, or to instead let that one drop, throwing off the even balance – and doesn’t the one on the left sort of seem like the unruly brother of the one on the right?

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Coal Chute Point and The Pit

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Coal Chute Point and The Pit - Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.
Coal Chute Point and The Pit - Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

Coal Chute Point and The Pit. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. March 29, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

(Shortly after posting this, another photographer wrote to suggest that I might consider renaming the image to “Point and Chute.” ;-)

For all the years – decades, actually, and more than a few – that I’ve been visiting Point Lobos, there are still places that I have not gotten around to visiting within the boundaries of the park. Among them are some headlands not far from Whalers Cove that I’ve looked at for a long time… and then always headed off to some other part of the reserve without visiting them. Earlier this week I visited Point Lobos with no particular goal in mind aside from making some photographs, and I somehow finally ended up in this picturesque area that offers some quite different views from those found in the areas that more directly face out into the Pacific. (While it is, indeed, picturesque… the place names are not. Coal Chute Point? The Pit?)

The light in this photograph is somewhat subdued, at least in comparison to some of the photographs you might see of such a place, typically shot in the evening when the sky is at its most colorful. (Yes, I’ve certainly made my share of those photographs at Point Lobos, too!) But this light had a different sort of appeal, and it continuously changed during my half day there. When I arrived some fog was just clearing near the coast. It was a strange pattern – fog way inlands that looked more like the typical winter valley tule fog than the summer coastal fog. In fact, as is frequently the case in winter, it was clear at the coast. But somewhat surprisingly there was a regular old fog bank lurking a ways off the shoreline – and later in the day it moved in on the coast. Along with this there were high, thin clouds from a weather front that was passing well to the north. These conditions can still provide directional light but light which is softer and can fill in the shadows a bit – making it possible to shoot in places and at times of the day when the light might otherwise be too harsh. For this photograph I decided to “go wide,” and shoot with a 24mm focal length of a full frame DSLR to accentuate the distance between the foreground beach and the distant horizon and to include the full width of the curving wave as it broke on the beach.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | 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.

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

Rocky Creek Bridge, Big Sur Coastline

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Rocky Creek Bridge, Big Sur Coastline
Rocky Creek Bridge, Big Sur Coastline

Rocky Creek Bridge, Big Sur Coastline. South of Monterey, California. May 13, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Bluff, cliffs, seastacks, and fog-shrouded coastal hills along the Big Sur coastline of California.

The bridge in the distance beneath the rounded, fog-topped hill is the Rocky Creek Bridge. (It is sometimes mistaken for the famous Bixby Bridge, which is a bit further south along the coast highway.) I’m very familiar with this area, having photographed from here many times. In fact, later on this morning I was up in the hills beyond the hilltop home while investigating a gravel road that heads back up into the mountains here.

I wanted to juxtapose a range of near and far bits of the bluffs above the shoreline cliffs in this scene. While the coastal meadows will turn brown very soon, on this mid-May date and in this relatively wet year they were still green. The coast highway travels along the upper part of the bluffs, often between the cliffs and the hills rising above. Beyond the bridge you can see the roadway rise to pass around another hill before descending toward the next creek to the south.

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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: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Whalers Knoll, Point Lobos

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Whalers Knoll, Point Lobos
Whalers Knoll, Point Lobos

Whalers Knoll, Point Lobos. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. July 10, 2010© Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

View of foggy Pacific Ocean from Whalers Knoll, Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

Whalers Knoll is yet another feature of Point Lobos named after “whalers” – Whalers Cove is another. Sometimes when I hike the trails along the north shore of the park I detour up a trail to the top of the knoll, from which there is a view of a larger expanse of landscape and seascape. But still, given the rough and rugged landscape of Point Lobos, there is no clear and unobstructed view – instead you can see the ocean between ridges and peaks and then only by looking for a spot where the Monterey Cypress trees are not as thick.

Although Point Lobos is a very popular park, it is usually possible to find some solitude by walking away from the most popular shoreline areas and hiking a bit. Since this trail is a bit out of the way and involves a climb, it isn’t unusual to be alone on at this lookout, especially on a foggy day when many visitors find the view from their cars to be sufficient!

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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.