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Getting Skunked at Point Reyes

August 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yesterday I got sort of “skunked”* at Point Reyes National Seashore – yet, again. ;-)

I get to shoot there from time to time – a beautiful and interesting place that is not so far from me that I can’t drive there and back in a day. I find it fascinating in many ways, but also a bit difficult to get my brain around how to photograph it. While I can show up in the high Sierra – that region from the lodgepole forests well up above timberline – and almost immediately find a wealth of subjects, at Point Reyes I have to search and look a lot!

There are, I think, several reasons for this. Frankly, a place like Point Reyes, as spectacular as it can be in the right places and at the right times, often does not call attention to itself in the same ways that some more dramatic landscapes do. Much of the park is covered with a low, dense forest, and other places are largely bucolic and grass-covered hillsides. I love the beaches and the estuaries and inlets, but they tend to offer peaceful quiet more than stunning features.

A part of it is the need to know where, when, and how to look. A few weeks ago I hiked on a long trail past the of the estuary areas, on a day that was mostly foggy. At first, it was difficult for me to see any photographs in this particular landscape, even though I like the fog and enjoyed being there. Liking a place and seeing how to make photographs of it can be quite different things. However, on that afternoon and evening I did get the sense of this landscape enough to make a few photographs that I believe “work.” They are not necessarily the photographs I thought that I would make, but instead photographs that I found as I spent more time just looking and getting the sense of the place.

I also have to get lucky and/or change my expectations at Point Reyes. The weather there is, as is often the case on the Pacific coast, quite variable. Yesterday, on one side of main ridge along Tomales Bay the sun was out. But I could see that further north there were wisps of fog, and I started developing some ideas about photographs that might include sun and perhaps a bit of fog. But when I crossed the ridge to go to Limantour the fog line was just inland from the coast and those ideas were not possible. I did make some photographs – and I think I’m going to like at least a few of them – but I also spent a lot of time walking and looking and not photographing, just enjoying the foggy atmosphere (which, when the wind came up, reminded me of the coming winter) and the sounds.

* For those who might not know, “skunked” is an American English idiom that essentially means “defeated or frustrated,” though in a manner that might be a bit self-deprecating and perhaps humorous.

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

August 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

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.

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

Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay

July 2, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.

This is certainly not a unique viewpoint for photographing the Golden Gate (and the bridge named after it) and the rest of San Francisco Bay… but I keep returning anyway. While the principal physical elements of the scene – Marin headlands, bridge, the City, bridges, Yerba Buena Island, the East Bay – the conditions of light and atmosphere change constantly. The variations in the fog alone could be the subject of a book, I’m sure! It can come from the west (summer) or the east (winter), it can be high or low (or both at once!), thin or thick, opaque or luminous, static or moving quickly, illuminated by sun or by artificial light at night, and more.

On this morning it was a combination of several of those. There was a sort of thin fog/haze at the lower levels, but the thicker fog was quite high, above the bridge towers and even a bit above my position in the Marin headlands. The fog was beginning to break up, starting to the east and gradually moving westward toward the coast, and when I made this photograph large beams of diffused light were coming through the fog deck and lighting areas around the San Francisco waterfront and even on the bay waters. Lining up the elements of the photograph wasn’t terribly hard once I found the composition I liked, but then I waited for boats for move into or out of the frame (see a large freighter passing between towers of the distant Bay Bridge) and for the light to appear in (as close to) the right places (as one can hope for).

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Plants, Redwood Forest

June 11, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

New spring growth on the forest floor among the redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, California.

This is another photograph that I have been “sitting on” for over a year. Back then I made a spring visit to the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, and, as always, arriving very early in the morning. By this time in late April the forest plants were growing like crazy, especially since this had been (and still was, at that point) an unusually wet season. Lush plants were growing everywhere on the forest floor beneath the canopy of coast redwoods, and there was water everywhere.

As I walked along the trail I was keeping my eyes out for small areas of foliage that were dense enough to be almost solid and which included combinations of more than one kind of plant. The undergrowth of “clover” – actually Oregon oxalis or redwood sorrel – was growing everywhere, but I wanted something other than a uniform patch of that plant. Near a trail junction in deep shade beneath the trees I found these plants. At the time I was thinking of a color rendition of the photograph, but as I worked on it in post I became frustrated with that possibility due to the difficult color of the shaded light and some reflections on the surfaces of the leaves. So I let this image go and moved on to others. I was recently revisiting raw files from 2011 and when I arrived at this one, it now seemed like it might be worth working on in black and white.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: gate

Getting Skunked at Point Reyes

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Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon

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Plants, Redwood Forest

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

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