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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Photo Essay: Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary

May 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Happy birthday to the San Francisco Bay Area’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge!

Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay Panorama - Panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, and the San Francisco Bay in dramatic morning light. — Panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, and the San Francisco Bay in dramatic morning light.

Photographed from near the north end of the bridge, the sweep of the cables leading to the top of the north tower frames a panorama from Alcatraz Island at the far left, past beams of morning sun on the east end of the Bay Bridge, across the skyline of downtown San Francisco, with the Bay in the foreground.

Having lived and photographed in the San Francisco Bay Area for decades, the Golden Gate Bridge has been a central part of my experience of the area. I frequently photograph in San Francisco and across the bridge to the north, and even when the bridge itself is not my primary intended subject I almost always look in its direction to see what it will offer up as a new photographic opportunity. I have been fortunate to be close enough to see the bridge in an incredible range of conditions – at night, in winter storms, at sunrise, and more.

Since the 75th Anniversary of the opening of the bridge is being celebrated today, it seems like a good time to collect a few of my favorite Golden Gate Bridge photographs that feature, include, or are part of the experience of this icon. In keeping with the retrospective theme of such a birthday, I’ve chosen mostly black and white photographs. But first, a panorama…

Golden Gate Bridge Tower, Transamerica Building, San Francisco Skyline

Among the most famous views of the bridge are those looking back across the Golden Gate (which, technically, refers to the mouth of the bay) past the bridge toward the skyline of San Francisco.

North Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, Night - Black and white night photograph of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California. — Black and white night photograph of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California.

The bridge and the city take on a completely different appearance at night. This photograph was made from the hills near the north end of the bridge, looking back through it towards San Francisco.

Ships, San Francisco Bay, Morning - Freighter departing San Francisco Bay on a foggy morning is seen through the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge with the San Francisco skyline in the background. Black and white photograph. — Freighter departing San Francisco Bay on a foggy morning is seen through the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge with the San Francisco skyline in the background. Black and white photograph. September 18, 2007.

I am especially fond of the very early morning views of the bridge and the bay, and I often stop here on my way to photograph other locations. While one can certainly end up completely socked in by fog here, at other times the range of effects of atmosphere and light is extraordinary. Here several ships pass under the bridge on a morning when the fog is just beginning to clear east of The City.

Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, Morning Haze - Black and white photograph of Golden Gate Bridge north tower, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the East Bay Hills in morning haze.

Seen from high in the Marin Headlands, the silhouette of the north tower of the bridge bisects the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on a morning when low haze blanketed the Bay Area.

Clearing Fog, North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge - Clearing Fog, North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge - Morning fog clears from the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California. — Clearing Fog, North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge - Morning fog clears from the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California.

Classic Golden Gate Bridge fog passes fills the entrance to the Bay and rises up over the hills of the Marin Headlands, with the skyline of The City visible on the horizon.

Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay, Morning Haze - Winter morning haze partially obstructs the view across San Francisco Bay, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Treasure Island, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the city of Oakland. — Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay, Morning Haze

The Oakland area and the eastern section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – both the old version and the new one under construction – seem over one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sutro Tower and Golden Gate Bridge South Tower, Morning - Morning traffic crosses the Golden Gate Bridge approaching the south tower with haze-shrouded San Francisco hills and Sutro Tower beyond. — Morning traffic crosses the Golden Gate Bridge approaching the south tower with haze-shrouded San Francisco hills and Sutro Tower beyond.

Looking south across the bridge toward the even taller structure of the Sutro Tower.

North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, Morning - The north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, with San Francisco Bay, the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, a departing ship, and the East Bay hills beyond in morning fog and haze. — North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, Morning

The silhouette of a large outgoing freighter passes beneath the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the distance beyond the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands, San Francisco Bay, Foggy Morning Light - San Francisco Bay morning fog over begins to break up over Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands and the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. — San Francisco Bay morning fog over begins to break up over Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands and the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge.

Alcatraz Island and the Bay, lit by golden early morning light.

San Francisco Skyline, Golden Gate Bridge Cables, Night - Photograph of the night skyline of San Francisco shot through the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Holiday lighting on downtown buildings. — Photograph of the night skyline of San Francisco shot through the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Holiday lighting on downtown buildings.

I’ll include one real night photograph of the bridge, though I’ll be sneaky about it and not show the whole bridge. (There are plenty of those photographs floating around and, yes, I have those, too!) Here I shot through the cables with a very long lens on a late autumn night when the holiday lights had been put up on the downtown San Francisco buildings – Look at the far left to see the Transamerica Building and the Embarcadero Center lights.

Golden Gate Bridge and Lunar Eclipse - The moon, in full lunar eclipse, passes behind the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. — The moon, in full lunar eclipse, passes behind the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I joined thousands of fellow Bay Area citizens to rise well before dawn and photograph this full lunar eclipse just before sunrise.

You can see many more of my San Francisco photographs in my gallery.

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: Wildlife

Seven Sandhill Cranes in Flight

March 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Panoramic photograph of seven sandhill cranes in flight above the Merced National Wildlife Area against a sky full of clearing evening storm clouds.

As I wrote when I posted the first in this series recently, on my return drive from Death Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area I realized that I had enough time to stop at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve just before sunset, so I altered my route so that I could drive out on Sandy Mush Road (I still love writing that road name!) to the Reserve and do a little bit of photography. Although I’ve done a bit of wildlife photography, it isn’t my main thing and this is the first year that I’ve headed out to the migratory bird areas of California’s Great Central Valley – so this is a relatively new experience for me.

I had seen video and photographs of the morning “fly out” and evening “fly in” at several locations in the Valley and was hoping that I might get to witness something like this. That didn’t happen, though at one point I saw and heard the event taking place at pond a ways north of the road I had stopped on. I’m getting the impression that this experiences probably requires some persistence and repeat visits. However, I did find a field that was filled with scores of sandhill cranes. I quietly stopped my car, grabbed the camera with a long lens, and got out on the side away from the field and watched quietly. Even these attempts at quiet weren’t enough as the birds began to edge a ways away from the roadside edge of the field before they quieted again and went about their business.

Before long a few small groups began to take flight. I was fortunate that a storm had just passed through and the remnant clouds were beginning to clear in the west, both providing a dramatic background in that direction and allowing a bit of colorful light to strike clouds directly above and to my east. This brings up an observation about photographing birds – admittedly from a photographer who isn’t quite an expert on this but who likes to try to learn… thinking about what is behind and around the birds is often as important as getting the birds themselves into the frame. I like to say that in this series I was thinking about the clouds almost as much as I was thinking about the birds. As I continue to practice and learn how to photograph these animals in flight, I find that I can begin to simultaneously think about keeping them framed in the viewfinder in interesting ways and remain aware of what else is in the frame as I pan.

Special thanks to my friend Tom Clifton for helping me identify some of the other birds I photographed on this visit.

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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.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM at 400mm (at B&H)
ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/3200 second

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

Sandhill Cranes in Flight, Evening

March 8, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 13 Comments

Five sandhill cranes take flight above the Merced National Wildlife Area in evening light.

Migratory birds have always been a subject that I’ve been aware of, but that I haven’t really paid enough attention to. Intellectually I know of their amazing travels between arctic and more temperate regions and I had heard about their appearance in California each winter season. I recall one magical evening a few years back when I began a long drive from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle late on a winter day, and as I travelled up the Sacramento Valley at twilight I saw huge flocks of birds and thought that I’d like to try to photograph this scene. I’ve seen and photographed a few interesting birds such as egrets and pelicans. But I somehow managed to mostly remain uninformed about their presence not far from where I live.

This season several things came together, seemingly by chance, to encourage me to actually make the effort to get out into California’s Great Central Valley to see (and hear!) the birds. The first was a chance meeting with one of my colleagues in front of the college espresso stand one morning. We were having a casual conversation and she mentioned that she had been out in the Cosumnes River area looking for birds recently. We talked a bit more and I asked her for more information. Being a librarian, she provided me with lots of information, including details of how to find some interesting places out there. A day or two later I found my way out to that part of the Valley and saw, for the first time close-up, the flocks of winter birds… and I was hooked. Within a few weeks I saw posts on the Chuq 3.0 blog where Chuq wrote about his photography of these birds. Then I saw a couple videos at Michael Frye’s blog that captured the “fly in” and “fly out” phases at the Merced National Wildlife Area. (This place is located out on a road that has to have my all-time favorite Central Valley road name: Sandy Mush Road ;-)

Fast forward a week or two and I was returning from shooting for four days in Death Valley, and driving into the Central Valley near Bakersfield. I looked at my watch and realized that I could probably make a small detour and be at the Merced National Wildlife Area before sunset. So I headed up highway 99 (rather than the more usual route up highway 5), found the turn off to Sandy Mush Road, and arrived at the area an hour or so before sunset on an evening when the clouds from a departing cold front lingered. I basically had no idea where I was going, since I had done literally no prior research other than finding the location via my iPhone. As I arrived in the general area I found a large field filled with what seemed like several hundred sandhill cranes. Slowly and quietly I stopped my car and got out on the side away from the birds and began to watch. I never did get to see the fly-in up close (though I could see a huge cloud of birds landing at a pond north of my position) but some of these cranes did depart from time to time, and I was able to photograph this group of the magnificent birds against the clouds in the western sky.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Five Pines, Reflected Light of El Capitan

November 22, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon light reflected from the face of El Capitan gently illuminates a group of five ponderosa pines near El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite Valley.

I photograph the oak trees of El Capitan Meadow almost every time I visit the Valley. The normal thing to do is to take the road back toward the west end of the Valley, pull out along the right side of the road, and either photograph from the road or head out to the south into the meadow itself. Almost every time I do this I look at the trees on the other side of the road and find them interesting, but I haven’t had much luck in photographing them. I often have the same experience – I look over there and think that there should be obvious subjects for a photograph, and sometimes even pick out general subjects… but when I try to actually shoot them nothing happens.

On this late afternoon on a fall day, the sun had just dropped below the cliffs to the west and I had more or less finished shooting the subjects that I was working with in the meadow. I headed back to the car and once again looked across the road into the forest along its north side. I thought I saw some interesting light over there and a bit further west, so I started walking. Eventually I came to a row of very large trees which I photographed, though I’m still not quite “seeing” an image in those shots. As I worked here I saw this group of five pines nearby and noticed that now that the sunlight was starting to fade from the Valley floor that they were lit with a strong glow from the south west face of El Capitan, which looks right above this section of the forest – it was as if someone had set up a 3000′ foot tall light panel just for me.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: five

Photo Essay: Golden Gate Bridge 75th Anniversary

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