Winter morning fog drifts among ridgetop oak trees, Calero County Park, California
This is an older photograph that I sort of “rediscovered” while going through older files recently. It was due for a bit of additional work, reformatting to fit my current preferred 4:3 print ratio, and the updated web border and text that you see in the online versions of my photographs. (And, to answer the question that comes up from time to time, my fine art prints do not include the text found in the online photographs!)
Although I no longer visit there quite as often, this area became a favorite location of mine a few years ago, especially during the winter months when morning fog frequently burns off and reveals the newly-green winter landscape of the California grassland and oak forests. The photograph was made on one of these very mornings, as I had hiked the familiar trail along the top of this ridge, to find myself on the border between fog in the valleys and clearing on the ridge, with the edge of the fog drifting through these trees and the sun backlighting this misty atmosphere.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
Falling virga drifts below sunset clouds of an incoming late-autumn Pacific storm front
First off, the word “virga” refers to streaks or columns of precipitation that fall from clouds but do not make it to the ground. Virga can often create beautiful, delicate, and gossamer atmospheric effects, especially when the light is just right. In this case the condition was back and top-lit by low sunset light flowing upwards toward the base of high clouds from an incoming winter Pacific storm front.
This evening was (yet another) of those on which earlier unpromising conditions exploded with color right at the end of the day. We had spent the morning photographing birds (mostly geese) at a Central Valley wildlife refuge, taken a short lunch break, and then returned to the refuge for late afternoon and evening photography. The geese were wonderful and we made a lot of photographs, but it seemed like the light was going to “die” before sunset as those high clouds began to drift in from the west. That’s OK, as there are ways to photograph in that more subdue light, but I think we may have been mildly disappointed that the clouds appeared to preclude special sunset colors. So we went about our business of photographing birds, not thinking too much about the sky. Speaking for myself, though, at some point I began to notice a bit of color in the clouds behind the birds. I stopped for a moment and looked to the east (where the sunset colors first are seen before the sweep across the sky toward the setting sun) and noticed that some color was developing. In short order, the underside of the clouds began to light up, and right at sunset we were treated to an absolutely brilliant display of intense color to the west. Since I was shooting with a long telephoto I decided to try a few detail shots of small sections of the sky. If you look very carefully, you might be able to spot a jetliner heading into the sunset.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
Winter fog wraps around the lower slopes of Marin County mountains along the Pacific coast north of San Francisco
This was the sort of day of photography that I have learned to accept as something that comes with the territory. I was up hours before dawn, and on the road shortly after that, with an idea of photographing in the redwoods of Marin County north of the Golden Gate, or perhaps of photographing along the coast where high surf was predicted. As I got on the road I noticed that there was some fog about, which is fine as I often like photographing in such conditions. Nearly an hour later as the time of sunrise approached, I noticed that the day was not becoming light very fast and, in fact, things were looking quite gray. I crossed the Golden Gate in fog, stopped briefly on the north side of the bridge, and wasn’t able to see much of anything. I continued on to the Muir Woods area and parked. As I sat in the car, it became clear that there wasn’t going to be much in the way of compelling light here, either. (I’m not one to insist on incredible light, so when I say that the light wasn’t promising… I mean it!) I soon decided to leave and go up the coast a ways. As I drove I figured out that the murky light was the result of a combination of thick coastal fog, generally hazy conditions where it wasn’t foggy, and above it all the high clouds of a passing weather front.
While finding myself in conditions like these doesn’t exactly make me happy – who wouldn’t prefer beautiful light and easy subjects!? – I don’t get upset about it any more. In order to find really special subjects and light one must simply go “out there” a lot to increase the odds. Special things are special at least partially because they are not ordinary, and we cannot expect stupendous conditions on every outing. I shoot enough to have had the good fortune to almost regularly encounter truly wonderful conditions and to have some idea how to work with conditions that are merely good. But along with this good, I also have to accept the possibility – certainty, actually – that there will be some days when it seems like nothing happens. This was one of those days. I enjoyed being out and about, and I explored a few places that I had not visited before. I gave up on some ideas, tried others, and when the light was clearly not going to be good in the forest, I headed for the coast. When that didn’t work, I headed into the hills. It was what it was! Eventually, I ended up at the Mount Tamalpais State Park high in the Marin hills, and around one bend in the road the view opened to the west and I could see the ocean of fog bumping up against ridges below me and stretching on out over the ocean – so I stopped and made the only photographs of the day that worked. It wasn’t a great day… but it was still a good day!
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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
Fog intrudes on blue sky over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore.
One more “minimal seascape” from my mid-August visit to Point Reyes National Seashore – a short visit of mostly an afternoon, on which I headed to Limantour looking for sun along the coast. That’s not quite what I found – but you can never be sure what the weather will do along this section of the Pacific coastline. Descending on the final bit of road to the beach, it was apparent that I was going to be dealing with fog. This photograph is looking more or less southwest, but straight to the west and to the northwest things were already completely socked in. After making this photograph I finished the drive to Limantour and then took a walk out toward some of the nearby estuaries – and that entire walk was under fog and in cold wind.
I have been doing a series of minimal seascape photographs for some time now, making a few more images of this type whenever I happen to be near the coast and conditions are right. These photographs are a bit trickier than they might appear. It almost looks like I could just point that camera out toward the ocean and make them – and, in fact, when I started this it almost seemed like it might be that easy. Before long I figured out that if I worked that way I would end up with… photos that looked like I just pointed the camera out toward the ocean. So I look for scenes, usually involving some sort of clouds, fog, or mist and often some interesting lighting that seem to create, for the most part, nice stable images that may have a bit more going on in them if you have time to look closely, and which also usually might evoke some sense of the calm and stability of the sea. Here I was mostly interested in the clouds, but I decided to anchor the sky to just a thin strip of water, darker blue but also partly obscured by the lower edge of the fog bank. I aimed toward a boundary area between the blue sky and the thicker fog, and captured an area of transition where both sky and fog are in play. Believe it or not, there was a fair amount of work to be done in post, including getting the right amounts of contrast and pushing the brightest parts of the clouds just far enough to create a feeling of light, but not so far as to look fake.
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
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
