Tag Archives: green

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

Lupine, Sierra Nevada

May 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A thick patch of spring lupine flowers high in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Range, California.

We had time for only a one-day trip to Yosemite, timed to coincide with the peak of the dogwood bloom season in the Valley. We left very early – way before dawn – with a plan of arriving in the Valley not too long after the sun came up. (This time of year, arriving by dawn in the Valley would require a 2:00 a.m. start time – and, in some ways, the Valley itself isn’t so much a dawn photography subject.) After we entered the park on highway 120 I started looking for some dogwood trees that often blossom a bit later – since the light was good here it would make more sense to stop and shoot that to keep driving to arrive further on when the light wasn’t as good.

We saw a couple of trees thick with flowers, and quickly turned around to drive back to them. We spent some time photographing these trees and then moved on. (Unlike in a typical year, there was no snow at the junction with the still-closed Tioga Pass Road, and areas that would usually be full of run-off water seemed largely dry.) The area, burned twice in recent years, along the road as it descends toward the Valley is often a good place to find wildflowers. I wasn’t expecting too much in this drought year, and for the most part I was right – but at a turn-off we suddenly came upon a very large patch of beautiful lupines and stopped to photograph. I’m crazy about shooting into the light, so I got down low and photographed these flowers with the light coming from almost directly behind.

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

Morning Fog, Tomales Bay

May 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on fog shrouded green hills along the shores of Tomales Bay, California

I made this photograph just after dawn on a beautiful February morning along the shore of Tomales Bay near Inverness, California, while on my way to the Point Reyes National Seashore. That I was here in this spot was the result of slightly poor planning. I had awakened three hours before dawn so that I could drive up here and, or so I hoped, be out at Point Reyes near the lighthouse at dawn and photograph the outer edges of Drakes Bay in the very early morning light. I miscalculated the driving time and didn’t get out the door quite as quickly as I planned, and by the time I was approaching Tomales Bay I knew that the sun was going to be up well before I got to my original goal.

As I drove through the redwood forest approaching the coast it was very foggy, a bit to my surprise since the forecast had not mentioned this. At first I thought that the fog might extend the early morning shooting a bit, but as I arrived near Olema and then headed out on the road along Tomales Bay, it was clear (literally!) that the fog was lifting and that if I was going to shoot the early light it had to be right then and there. I pulled over at a spot where some interesting buildings stand in the shallow waters along the shoreline, unloaded my gear and walked a bit to make some shots here. I was surprised by the cold. Here by the water, where the nighttime temperature are typically moderated quite a bit, it was about 30 degrees! The first light was beginning to angle across the low, green hills on the other side of the bay as the wispy fog began to disperse, so I made a simple photograph of the water of the bay, with water plants in the foreground, the color gradient fading from dark blue to near white, and the hills beyond.

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

Coastal Valley, Morning Light

May 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light streams across ridges and illuminates mist filling a coastal valley along the Big Sur coastline of California

This might be described as “yet another in a series” of photographs made along the Pacific Coast Highway south of Monterey, in which I look for canyons filled with misty early morning light, aim my camera up into the canyon, and see what I can come up with. The elements are: fog that it thin enough to pass light, early morning back-light spilling over the tops of coastal ridges, canyons and valleys with many overlapping ridges, lush and green coastal vegetation. The variations are endless. The challenges are finding canyons with just the right combinations of these elements and, of course, shooting straight into the light, a favorite technique of mine.

This little valley is one that you would most likely pass by and not even see, since it is small and in a section of the coast where you attention is likely to be drawn the other way and toward the Pacific ocean. I’ve seen this spot a few times as I have driven past, but I had assumed that it might not be photograph-able given some power lines and the scarcity of places to pull over and park. This time I looked a bit closer and thought I saw a way to shoot from alongside the highway and perhaps avoid the wires and I did see a small pull-out nearby, so I turned around at the next opportunity, came back, and spent a bit of time working this scene.

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

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

April 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Pacific Coast Highway winds along the rugged California Big Sur coastline at Bixby Bridge

This is a pretty classic view of the California coastline, including a well-known section of the Pacific Coast Highway (route 1) below Monterey in the northern section of the Big Sur coast. Shot from high on bluffs above the ocean, where the highway climbs to one of its high points, the photograph looks north up the coast across pastureland on the foreground bluff towards the famous Bixby Bridge, located in the surf-filled cove just beyond. More bluffs and ridges dropping to the sea fade into the distant haze beyond that.

This was a beautiful spring day, so I got up very early and was in the Monterey area as the sun came up. The conditions were not quite what I expected. I knew that it was supposed to be windy, so I was expecting very clear conditions. The sky was clear of clouds, but there was quite a bit of low atmospheric haze – it almost looked like it wanted to be fog but couldn’t quite get it together to form clouds. This light does difficult things to colors, but it also creates an interesting contrast between the relatively clear closer objects and further subjects desaturated by the haze. It was also windy – very windy by the time I stopped shooting late in the morning.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: green

Lupine, Sierra Nevada

Morning Fog, Tomales Bay

Coastal Valley, Morning Light

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

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