Tag Archives: fog

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Pier, San Francisco Waterfront, Morning

July 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An old pier along the San Francisco Bay waterfront, morning light.

When I take the train to San Francisco early on summer mornings, it is frequently the case that the sun is out as I walk along the Embarcadero waterfront, and the light greats a bright glowing atmosphere as the haze and light fog above the bay are backlit. It can be almost too bright to look at. Often the buildings of the east bay and the cranes of the Port of Oakland are faintly visible on the horizon, as they are in this photograph. There is actually a range of east bay mountains above these structures, but they are not quite visible through the glowing atmosphere in this photograph.

The Embarcadero, the road that runs along the waterfront of the bay on the east side of The City, is lined with many old piers. They range from those that have been restored and turned into tourist areas (think of Pier 39 with its souvenir shops), others that house businesses and even a museum or two, some that are primarily parking areas, and a few others that have been left to rot in the sun. In some ways, those in the latter group are the most interesting to photograph, though there are fewer of them now that the value of this waterfront real estate has once again been recognized. Originally, this was a working port with passenger and freight ships. Now most of that business has gone across the bay to Oakland. However, today the bay front properties are probably more valuable for other purposes anyway.

I have photographed this particular pier before, but this time I liked the very bright sky, barely visible structures across the bay, and the morning light that is just hitting the left side of the buildings on the pier.

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: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Flock, Waddell Creek Beach

June 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of pelicans turns toward Waddell Creek Beach along the Pacific coast of California.

This group was photographed a few seconds before I photographed the single overhead pelican that I posted a couple of days ago. Here the flock had turned back towards the land in preparation for rising to the edge of a much higher bluff just to the north.

Since I so recently described the circumstances of this shoot, I’ll keep this text short!

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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: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Three Pelicans, Blue Sky

June 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Three pelicans fly along the California Pacific coastline under clearing fog and blue sky.

To my surprise, I got to feed my pelican obsession on Memorial Day. As we drove up the coast north of Santa Cruz, where the road frequently follows the edges of coastal bluffs where they drop off into the Pacific, we started to notice larger than usual groups of pelicans heading north and riding the updrafts next to the cliffs. Having watched these birds many times before, I have learned a bit about their “traffic patterns,” so I suspected that if we went a bit further north to where the road comes down at a beach where a creek enters the ocean that we might encounter the same birds as they, too, dropped down to the water’s edge.

My hunch turned out to be right, and a few minutes after we arrived I caught a glimpse of the distant flock coming around the edge of the bluffs to the south and starting to descend toward the beach. They approached over the edge of the surf, but then turned toward the land as they started to climb again to rise above the next bluff to the north – and for a few seconds I was able to track and photograph them against the thinning fog and blue sky.

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

Sailboats, Pacific Ocean

June 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Sailboats under spring skies along the Pacific Ocean coast south of San Francisco.

Memorial Day was a day of nearly perfect weather along the California coast between Santa Cruz and Point Reyes. (When we eventually got to Point Reyes it was nearly windless – and anyone who has been there knows how rare that is.) We started in Santa Cruz for breakfast and then headed north up Highway 1 along the coast. A ways north of Santa Cruz we came upon that zone where the high fog was just breaking up along a border with areas of blue sky. Everything, from the water to the clouds to the sky was some shade of luminous blue.

The photograph was made from a high bluff not far from Waddell Creek. We initially stopped to look for shore birds, since they fly very close to the edge of the bluff, using updrafts to travel along the coast. The high vantage point made the color of the ocean a bit deeper and made more of it visible between the near shore and the horizon. The sailboats were a surprise – I don’t usually see them along this section of the coast.

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