Tag Archives: dusk

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

Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk

March 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light silhouettes the rugged Marin headlands above the Pacific Ocean disappearing into distant haze.

On a day that began with a visit to the De Young Museum (the final weekend of the David Hockney exhibit) we ended up with some hours of free time in San Francisco… so we decided to head across the Golden Gate and try to be in position somewhere for interesting evening light. We didn’t really have a concrete plan, and we could have ended up in the headlands, along the bay, or perhaps further north along the coast. We stopped for coffee and killed a bit of time in the mid-afternoon light, and by the time we finished the early winter sunset was closer than we had expected.

Looking at the late hour (hey, it was a “vacation day!”) we realized that we didn’t have nearly as much time as we imagined, so we quickly figured out that our best bet was just to head back into the Marin Headlands on the very popular Conzelman Road – yes, the place where hundreds or thousands of people go almost every evening to watch the sun set or the fog roll in (or, sometimes, just a plain old wall of fog!) over the Golden Gate. We drove up the road and the crowds were, as expected, large enough that there were few places to park. In fact, I had to pass up a few possible photographic subjects since I could not stop. Eventually we found a place to pull over and get out and take a look. It was a pretty evening, but the view of the City was not unusually spectacular and I left my camera equipment in the car and just enjoyed the evening view and crisp air. As I stood there, I saw that the backlight over the Pacific outside the golden gate was starting to produce a beautiful diffused light over the water as the atmosphere became increasingly opaque toward the horizon. So I grabbed the tripod and camera and walked up the road a ways to make a few photographs of the ocean and the steep, rugged Marin Headlands cliffs plunging toward the edge of the water.

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

Coastline, Dusk

February 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light falls across the rugged Big Sur coastline, California

This was a very special bit of end-of-day light. Earlier we had spent about nine hours driving south between Monterey and Piedras Blancas on the Big Sur coast, stopping frequently along the way to make photographs of the beautiful winter light. At the southern end of our drive we spent time photographing the elephant seals at their “nursery” alongside the road – a popular place for observing this amazing creatures, especially at this time of year when the females are giving birth and the beach is crowded with all sorts of elephant seals: bulls, females, new babies.

Finishing here, it was time to turn the car north again and head back the way we had come. We started up the Pacific Coast Highway and very soon began the first climb into the coastal hills. We kept an eye out for potential gold hour photographic subjects. There are, of course, no shortage of them along this spectacular coastline, so we figured that we would find something no matter where we were during the last hour of light even though we had no specific plan yet. Eventually we came to a place where we had stopped earlier on the southward drive and we pulled off. Earlier, closer to the middle of the day, the light had been very bright here, illuminating coastal haze and reflecting off the ocean surface in a way that reminds me of molten metal. But now the light was lower and coming in at a more direct angle, and the atmosphere softened and the colors warmed in the late-day light. At first the light was more intense and I made a few photographs with the scene brilliantly colored. At one point I looked away to photograph something else, and when I looked back the sun had dropped behind a semi-transparent band of clouds near the horizon, significantly muting the brightness and color of the light on the base of the hills, but still leaving a few intense spots higher up.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Wetlands, Dusk Sky

February 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese and colorful dusk sky reflected in wetland pond, San Joaquin Valley

This was close to the final photograph I made on my New Year’s Day visit to the San Joaquin Valley. Despite arriving back from the east coast the night before after 10:00 PM, I was determined be out in the valley at a wildlife refuge for the first day of the year. Up hours before dawn, I drove for two hours in the dark and arrived in dawn twilight to find a couple of my friends were already there. We photographed all morning, in light that changed from pre-dawn fog to morning mist to typical winter Central Valley haze, and then we took a break in the early afternoon to go into town and get something to eat.

By this time the light conditions were looking a bit less promising, as high clouds were blocking some of the light, and this combined with the haze to create some very murky conditions. I had more or less decided to call it a day and, in fact, my friends did decide to head back home. Late in the afternoon I was about to do the same thing, but I realized that my route would take me back past the refuge – so I might as well drop in there and see what was up on the way. It was not much more than an hour before sunset when I arrived and it was still quite murky. But I know that there is often a possibility that these conditions can turn colorful when the distant sky is lit but sunset colors. I worked my way around the area to find this very large flock of geese settling in for the evening and, sure enough, the sky lit up during the last few minutes of daylight and into the early evening.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond

January 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cranes fly through evening sky above geese in a San Joaquin Valley pond.

I made this photograph on New Year’s Day 2014. Two years ago it seemed like a good idea to begin the new year by greeting its first dawn in the San Joaquin Valley, and sharing the experience with thousands of migratory birds and a few like-minded friends. Getting there was a stretch this year – late the previous night I had arrived home from a week in New York City, and getting up four hours later to drive two hours in the dark was going to be a challenge. But I made it and after photographing through the morning I thought that I might just head home. In the early afternoon we broke off from the photography and went to nearby town to grab something to eat, and by the time we were done it was only an hour or less until the evening “show” would begin back in the wetlands, so I shelved by early departure plans and headed back into the field.

I’m glad I did. It turned out to be a very beautiful evening, with many thousands of birds and with an unexpectedly beautiful sky. Often when it seems a bit gray and “blah” in the late afternoon, the evening light can end up illuminating this thick atmosphere, turning it both colorful and near-transparent. That is what happened here as I was photographing a large group of Ross’s geese that had settled in on the wetlands near this small tree. As the light diminished, I hoped for a fly-in of the sandhill cranes, which can be one of the most magical moments of any day in this area. Unlike the geese, which tend toward raucous and unpredictable behavior, the sandhill cranes seem to show up in large groups right at dusk, mostly gliding smoothly above the ponds as they head for their landing spots.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: dusk

Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk

Coastline, Dusk

Geese, Wetlands, Dusk Sky

Cranes and Geese, Sunset, Reflecting Pond

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