Tag Archives: haze

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.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Blue Water, Blue Sky, Boat

June 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Blue light and morning haze over San Francisco Bay

I’m channeling the blue in this photograph, shot along the San Francisco waterfront earlier this month. The facts are straightforward — I was walking along the San Francisco Bay waterfront early in the morning, as I like to do during the summer. There was some morning haze above the bay, left over from the dissipating fog, and it took on a blue coloration from the sky. Across the bay the giant cranes of the Port of Oakland are visible along the East Bay shoreline, nearer a boat passes near the end of breakwater.

I think that some people might wonder at all the city photographs, especially since so much of my photograph is of the natural world — the coast, the Sierra, migratory birds, the desert. I photograph the city for quite a few reasons. For one, it is closer than some of those other subjects, and at a minimum photographing in the city give me a chance to keep my eye “in tune.” In some ways, urban shooting can do more for this than more photography of the natural world, since the urban environment often presents such simplified forms and because I often have to work quickly and rely on (and thereby reinforce) my visual instincts. In addition, I just have to admit that there is a part of me that likes the urban world with its intense and compressed experiences. (Not that this photograph shows that part of it!)

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

Desert Dawn, Storm Clouds

June 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 6 Comments

Layers of dawn clouds from an arriving storm above receding mountains and valleys, Death Valley

This photograph comes from just about two months ago, during a photography visit to Death Valley National Park. It has been a very strange weather year in California, and the strangeness continued on this trip. In early April, almost anything can happen with Death Valley weather… and much of that “anything” occurred while we were there. On this day, the main attractions was… snow!

The night before I had decided that it looked like there might be the potential for interesting light up high in the mountains to the west of the Valley. My hope was that the clouds of an incoming weather front my just be making their appearance over the mountains, but leaving the sky to the east mostly clear or perhaps with some interesting clouds around dawn. We were up well before first light and on the road. As it began to be light we could see that there were a lot of clouds coming in, and when we arrived at our intended shooting location the clouds were closing in quickly. I guessed that there might, just maybe, be a brief window of light as the sun rose above mountains on the far side of the valley and, for an instant, might shine light horizontally above the mountains and below the clouds. It didn’t quite happen. (And you can’t always count on the good light. You have to be out there in some light failures if you hope to be there enough to get the miraculous successes, too.) The best we got was a brief and fiery illumination of the undersides of these clouds, above darker lower clouds and the shadowed peaks of the Amargosa Range.

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

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

May 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring haze, morning light, and rugged mountains meeting the Pacific Ocean, Big Sur coast

This spot marked the furthest south that I travelled on my brief photographic foray along the Big Sur coast earlier this week. Here, as in a number of other spots along this section of the Pacific Coast Highway, the route rises high above the ocean to pass through a section of very steep cliffs where the coastal mountains and the ocean meet abruptly. From this overlook the spines of a few nearby ridges were just to my south, and beyond the shoreline disappeared into the glowing atmospheric haze to the south.

One of the advantages of modern digital cameras is that they permit more flexibility and allow us to make aesthetic choices about our photographs more freely. Although I mostly “see” in color, sometimes a subject works better in black and white. Sometimes I don’t even realize this at the time of the exposure. Which is OK, since digital allows us to sometimes think less of “making the photograph” in the field and perhaps more about “bringing the image back” for full realization in the post-processing stage. In some cases, it allows us to focus more on pure capture and to put off some of the decisions we might have had to make at that point until later. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing! However, this is an example of a photograph that I knew was going to be black and white as soon as I saw the scene. Looking south along this coast on a day like this one, the air is filled with a haze made luminous by backlight. Colors are often so muted that they might as well be black and white, and the haze itself can take on a strong blue cast. Here I didn’t want that blue haze effect, but I did want the glow and the strong shapes of the ridges dropping into the sea.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: haze

Big Sur Coast, Winter Light

Blue Water, Blue Sky, Boat

Desert Dawn, Storm Clouds

Mountains, Sea, and Haze

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