Tag Archives: golden

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

Purple Trillium

March 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A purple trillium flower against a background of green leaves

Visiting Muir Woods National Monument to photograph trillium flowers is almost a late-winter tradition for me. It is also close to becoming a tradition to forget that it is time for trillium, and then realize just in time that they are in bloom. A week or so ago I realized that my previous trillium photographs from this location had been made in early March… so I would have to go now or else miss them this year! In this California drought year — now the third in a row — I wasn’t sure what I would find. Some recent rains had finally brought water to the area, and the creek through the monument was flowing and the ground was actually a bit wet, though it was far from the muddy place that is more typical at this time of year. New plant growth was beginning, albeit less lush than I am used to seeing in this coastal redwood forest.

We did find blooming trillium plants. There were fewer than in some recent years, and many of them seemed to have already blossomed, but with a bit of searching I was able to find some worthy of photographing. This year I decided I wanted to photograph them very close up, so I used a piece of equipment that often lives in my bag for months without ever coming out, a simple extension tube. I was able to position the camera almost directly over this flower, which let me make a background that consists entirely of the larger leaves of the plant.

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: 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.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Dune Detail, Last Light

February 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A last beam of light slants across rippled sand dunes and a few desert plants, Death Valley National Park

After a long day of driving and photographing along a back-country road in Death Valley National Park, I finally made it back to my campground in the mid-afternoon. (You might wonder how I can claim a “long day” when I finished in the mid afternoon – something about starting a couple of hours before dawn in temperatures in the teens!) I took a short break and did a few camp chores, and then it was time to head out once again for an evening shoot. I decided to make it something fairly simple that wouldn’t require a lot of travel, so I ended up at some dunes just before sunset.

While I’m not unwilling to shoot big, long views of dunes – sometimes they are quite impressive! – more often I focus on some smaller aspect of them, and I really like looking very closely when I can. One of the great things about focusing on the small details is that once you start to see them you find them everywhere – even in places that you might not think are all that spectacular. As I walked out into the dunes, with only a general sense of where I wanted to go, it was not long at all before I started noticing all sorts of subjects in the long shadows and warm light of the oncoming evening. Many subjects, such as this one, are illuminated by extremely transient light – slanting at a low angle across the tops of dunes and momentarily catching a plant or a bit of dune texture. I probably had little more than a minute to work with this subject and then the light disappeared – and I quickly found another similar subject and then another and so on until the light finally was gone.

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

Beyond the Golden Gate

January 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Pacific Ocean and western horizon outside the Golden Gate

A day trip to San Francisco began with a plan to see the David Hockney exhibition at the De Young Museum – important since the show was in its last few days. After spending several hours at this wonderful show, we came up with a vague plan to go somewhere and perhaps photograph something before dark. With a bit less than two hours to go and no more plan than that to go on, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to the north and were distracted by the idea of an espresso stop. By now there wasn’t a lot of time left before sunset, so we simply reversed course and headed back toward the bridge, where we did the “usual thing” and headed up into the Marin Headlands.

This is probably one of the very most popular area tourist destinations in the evening, since these hills north of the Golden Gate provide a classic and romantic view through the Golden Gate Bridge and back toward San Francisco – at least when it isn’t foggy. Since I know this area well, and in all kinds of conditions, at this point I was thinking more about simply enjoying the evening than about making photographs, and when we found a place to stop and park I left my camera equipment in the car. I looked toward The City and decided that I wasn’t going to photograph it… but as I looked to the west I saw some things that did seem a bit more interesting. At first I focused on the silhouette of more westerly cliffs as they dropped down to meet the Pacific. Then, after the sun had set, I decide to go ahead and just photograph the immense surface of the Pacific Ocean, reflecting sky colors and fading into the haze at the horizon.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: golden

Purple Trillium

Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk

Dune Detail, Last Light

Beyond the Golden Gate

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