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Rocky Point, Sea Stacks

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Rocky Point, Sea Stacks - Sea stacks near Rocky Point on a foggy evening along the Big Sur coastline.
Sea stacks near Rocky Point on a foggy evening along the Big Sur coastline.

Rocky Point, Sea Stacks. Big Sur Coastline, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sea stacks near Rocky Point on a foggy evening along the Big Sur coastline.

This photograph was made along the Big Sur coastline roughly in the area between the Rocky Creek and Bixby Creek bridges, about as far south as we managed to get while wandering around before a 8:00 p.m. dinner reservation back in Monterey. (Hey, it was my birthday!) The Peninsula extending into the Pacific in the upper section of the frame could be any of probably hundreds of similar peninsulas where the steep hills of the Big Sur coast drop to meet the ocean – but this one happens to be Rocky Point. The foreground sea stack could be any of thousands (or tens of thousands? I see perhaps a dozen or more in this scene alone…) of similar features found almost anywhere you look along this coast.

The light was both interesting and challenging. In most cases, I would rather try to photograph this interesting, foggy atmosphere than shoot perfect blue-sky conditions. (The latter can occur, though not as often as photography might suggest! Fog is more common.) It was very late in the day, probably around 7:00 p.m, and the sun was low and mostly hidden behind the off-shore fog bank. Here and there the fog backed off a bit from the shoreline or thinned a bit, and slightly more light appeared. The sea stack was in one such spot, and around and beyond the point there is also a bit more light.

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

Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point

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Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point - Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California
Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California

Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point. Big Sur, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California.

Talk about photographic geekiness – we ended up making photographs on my birthday! Because of a variety of factors, this turned out to be a bit of a low key birthday this year – despite some earlier plans to do all sorts of wild and crazy things. (Completing the JMT or going to Alaska will perhaps wait a bit… ;-) After a quiet and lazy morning we decided to head down to the Monterey area for a birthday dinner, which turned out to be quite nice by the way. (Thanks, Patty!)

Since we arrived a few hours before our dinner reservation. After stalling around a bit, thinking about this and that option, we decided to do the usual, obvious thing and head south on the Highway 1, the “coast highway,” into the upper portion of the Big Sur coastline area. While it is a very familiar area and one I visit a lot, it is never the same twice – all of the variables of light and atmosphere and season and weather are in play and you almost never know quite what you’ll find. On this early evening, the most important factor was that the edge of the ocean fog was positioned very close to the shore. This meant that sometimes it extended just a bit inland, creating light that ranged from slightly luminous to gray and murky, while in other areas it was just offshore, allowing light to hit the coast and even to light the surface of the ocean a bit. Here at the cove where the creek comes down Soberanes Canyon to meet the ocean, we found one of those boundaries – quite gray along the immediate coast in the distance, sunlight on the bluffs and hills at the right, and that wonderful boundary light in between. And above that, the barely perceptible difference between the soft clouds of fog and the light blue of the late-day sky.

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

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur

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Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur - Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.
Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur. Big Sur Coastline, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Having a couple of free hours late in the day, we ended up driving down the upper section of the Big Sur coastline below Monterey, to the area around the Rocky Creek and Bixby Bridges. (Though we stopped a bit short of the latter.) The light was alternately gray and murky, soft and misty, and sharp and bright – the fog was lurking near the coast, and depending upon which bend we drove around it covered the coast highway and the inland hills or it ended just off the coast.

This kind of coastal light creates some of the most transitory and ephemeral effects of all the subjects I shoot, similar perhaps to shooting the clouds of a dissipating winter storm among the aretes and spires of Sierra peaks. The variables in play are numerous: the point of the fog line off the shore or inland, whether or not the fog is thin enough to allow a bit of light so shine directly through, the appearing and disappearing pools of offshore light where the clouds thin, and the motion of the sea itself. Often I’ll spot what looks like absolutely gorgeous light, stop, grab gear and set up… and then look up to see that it is gone. Or that it is appearing in some other location where there was nothing a moment ago.

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon

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Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon - Evening fog obscures the landscape of Rodeo Lagoon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Evening fog obscures the landscape of Rodeo Lagoon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California. August 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog obscures the landscape of Rodeo Lagoon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

There is a somewhat unlikely story behind this photograph, but a pleasant one. Earlier on this day I had been in downtown San Francisco, in the heart of one of the more urbanized (and not in the good sense of the word) areas of the town. The reason for my visit was a pleasant one, and I do like San Francisco a great deal, but it was a very urbanized experience. I planned that after my downtown event concluded I would go do some evening and perhaps night photography elsewhere within an hour or so radius of The City, since I needed to be back there at about 11:00 p.m. It was mostly sunny in San Francisco, though there were a few wispy fog clouds present, so I started driving more or less west to see what might turn up.

As happened the last time I tried this pattern earlier this summer, as I drove I ended up in more fog rather than less. I recalculated and, again, thought that I’d try to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and see if I could get above the incoming fog by climbing into the Marin Headlands. The fog on the bridge was very thick and it was quite windy. At the north end of the bridge I headed up the hill – there was tantalizing, glowing light somewhere out there in the fog that suggested some clearing to my west and south, but the road itself was completely socked in. Optimistically (or foolishly!) I continued on to the area near Point Bonita, but I could not get out of the fog. It was now getting very close to actual sunset – though I could only detect this by a general darkening of the murky gloom – and I figured I might as well drive down towards Rodeo Beach to see what was there. As I crossed the upper end of Rodeo Lagoon I looked to my left and saw this small group of birds congregating not far from the shore, and in the fading light I decided that it was going to be this shot or no shot at all. I pulled over, took out the camera with the prime lens that I had used earlier for street shooting still in place, attached camera to tripod, and walked over close to the edge of the water.

After all of this driving, I was suddenly conscious of the quiet of this place in the evening light. The thick fog was blowing rapidly up the lagoon from the beach and glowing in the backlight as the light was fading, and three fog horns producing the tones of a minor triad (!) were slowly and mournfully sounding as I made several exposures of this scene. I finished, the light became very dark, and I drove a bit further so that I could walk across the beach to stand at the edge of the surf in the wind and fog before leaving.

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.