Tag Archives: haze

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

Oaks and Grass, Late Summer

August 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Late summer morning fog clears about oak and grass-covered California hills

Today’s photographic journey was a short one — back to a local park where I have photographed for quite a few years, though not recently. This is a place that I used to go to almost every week, and where I hiked just about every trail, to the point that I became intimately familiar with the place in all seasons. It is a landscape of rolling hills with a few high, rocky outcroppings, many oak trees, and grassland. In the manner of most of California, the grass deeply affects the appearance — changing from “impossible green” in winter and spring to brown or golden, depending upon your disposition. I think of it as golden.

This morning I was in a bit of an autumn frame of mind. (A separate post today will have more to say about that pleasant state.) I got up early to discover that the area was covered by the typical coastal high fog. (I live perhaps an hour’s drive from the Pacific Ocean.) This is not the sort of romantic and moody fog that sits low to the ground and floats among trees. It is the higher, drab, gray kind of fog that produces an undifferentiated sky and very flat light. However, at this time of year that fog will most certainly clear, usually by mid-morning. So I left home in these gray conditions, planning to be among the oaks and grass when the fog began to break up.

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.© Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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

Cove, Haze, Evening Light

August 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hazy sunset light on a small cove and successive ridges along the Pacific Coast Highway

The California Big Sur coast along the Pacific Coast Highway is a place of extraordinary beauty, but also light and conditions that change on a scale ranging from daily to seasonally. Summer often brings a lot of fog — enough fog to sometimes perplex and disappoint visitors who have seen photographs of beautiful summer vistas and imagine that they are the norm. They aren’t. Summer is the season of almost daily fog here. Fall and winter are more likely to provide those vistas, especially between the passage of great Pacific storms that sweep the atmosphere clear of fog and which may bring dramatic clouds. The “off-season” is also the time of the most impressive seascape, as those same winter storms can bring very high surf.

The foggy time of summer does have its attractions, especially when you become aware of the daily cycles. It is often foggy early in the morning, but the fog usually clears back to and beyond the coast later in the day. Photographing in the fog is special, though it can require you to look at the landscape in quite different ways. But as the fog clears you can follow the edges of the fog and light and discover all sorts of interesting and dynamic conditions. Once the fog does clear, the atmosphere often remains somewhat hazy. I know that some people think they want perfectly clear air, but I’ll take a bit of atmospheric haze over perfect clarity almost any day! This was a day of such haze, and very late in the day it began to glow in golden hour light and obscure the farthest parts of the seemingly unending series of Big Sur ridges dropping to the sea.

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

Western Horizon

August 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Thin clouds above afternoon sunlight reflected on the Pacific Ocean

This photograph begins a series from recent photographs of the Big Sur coast along the Pacific Coast Highway in California. After a week of being cooped up at home (which construction work was underway) I was itching to get out into the (more) real world, so I took a day for a long, all-day trip down this coast and back to make photographs. The trip reminded me of a lot of things, but among them was how wonderful it is, on a day of terrible inland heat, to be able to hug this coast where it remained cool and damp!

I’m one of those who is fascinated by the brilliant sunlit ocean surface and the way that it can recede towards an almost invisible horizon when the combination of light and atmospheric haze is just right. The high bluffs along this route can be excellent places to observe this and more.* At times the surface of the ocean takes on the appearance of molten metal and is almost too bright to look at. I always watch for these conditions when I am in this area, and I was not disappointed on this visit. In this scene, a group of passing thin clouds provides a visual counterpoint to the brilliant reflection on the ocean’s surface.

The “and more” I’m thinking of refers to an unbelievable California coastal experience that I shared with a number of other visitors at the end of this day. There are few other places in the world where you can pause at the top of cliffs hundreds of feet above the open sea at sunset, and watch for perhaps a half hour as a pod of gray whales assembles to feed, periodically breaching.

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

Big Sur Coast, Winter Light

July 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rugged Big Sur coastal mountains in winter light recede into the distance

The entire Big Sur coast below Monterey, California is full of spectacular land- and seascapes, as the western edge of the continent meets the Pacific Ocean. Often as I drive the Pacific Coast Highway though this region I wonder at the improbability of the existence of the road along its length. (In fact, it is a challenge to keep it open, as there are frequent slides during winter months.)

While the region is almost entirely spectacular, things seem to become a degree wilder and bigger once I pass the inland town of Big Sur and head back out to the coast on the southward drive. Here in many places the road alternates between the edges of high ridges that drop precipitously into the sea and sections that follow along the very edge of the water. (I tend to prefer traveling south along this road, as the light is more likely to be the sort that I look for.) At this particular location, the nearby cliffs plunge into the ocean at an especially steep angle and the curve of the coastline provides extremely long views.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: haze

Oaks and Grass, Late Summer

Cove, Haze, Evening Light

Western Horizon

Big Sur Coast, Winter Light

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