Tag Archives: headlands

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Departing Freighter

March 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A freighter heads out of the Golden Gate and into the Pacific Ocean on a winter morning

I was on my way to a location north of the Golden Gate Bridge, having left home while it was still dark and crossing the bridge as the sky just begin to lighten. As I often do when I pass by here, I left the main highway for a short time and went up a ways into the Marin Headlands to see what sort of early morning light might appear over the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. The lights of the City were still on at this early hour, so I first photographed in that direction.

There was a variety of types of clouds around the Bay—fog to the south and east, high clouds above, and a bit of general haze everywhere. As the sun came up behind the East Bay clouds and fog there was a bit of color, though the effect was subtle. A bit later this very large freighter approached the bridge as it prepared to leave the bay. It was one of the largest that I have seen pass beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. I went back to shooting other subjects, but my attention periodically went back to this ship as it moved farther off shore. Eventually a bit of muted sunlight hit the boat and some light came to the higher clouds as it headed on toward an off-shore fog bank and then, I imagine, a much longer voyage across the Pacific.

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

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

January 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden evening haze over the Pacific Coast below the rugged cliffs of the Marin headlands

How we ended up here on this evening in a slightly complicated and random story. Our main goal was to go San Francisco’s De Young Museum, where the big show of David Hockney’s work was entering its final days – we had been planning to go but somehow the time passed and it was now or never. I’d write, “It is a great show and you should go…” but it is too late! Hockney’s work is engrossing and compelling and includes subjects that a landscape photographer can identify with. (Hockney’s relationship to photography is interesting and, it seems, a bit complex. He is known for some photo collages that he created, yet he disparages photography or at least the way photography is often done. He apparently said something about photography along the lines of it being fine if you want to view the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops. Ouch!)

We spent a few hours in the exhibit and then it was mid afternoon. There were still a couple of hours of light left, so we decided to head across the Golden Gate Bridge, but with only the vaguest of plans in mind. (Basically the plan consisted of “Coffee and then look for something before the light is gone.”) By the time we got over there and were ready to look for light, we realized that we had only a short time before the light would go and we would have to head back over the bridge to get dinner. (We had reservations at a favorite Indian restaurant.) We realized that we had only enough time to drive up into the headlands on our way to the bridge, so up Conzelman Road we went. I missed a mysterious and ominous photograph of a large freighter in the haze outside the Golden Gate since I wasn’t able to find a place to stop and park – but we finally managed to park the car and get out and look around. I did not take my camera gear out at first, since I have more than enough photographs of The City and the bridge at sunset, but soon I became interested in the backlit glow around the rugged cliffs dropping to the water to the west and then the expanse of glowing, hazy air stretching over the water towards the horizon, where water and sky merged invisibly.

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

Muir Beach Overlook, Sutro Tower, Dusk

September 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

San Francisco’s Sutro Tower is visible in the distance beyond the Muir Beach Overlook in dusk light, in the Marin Headlands.

A few moments before making this photograph, I had decided that I was done for the evening, as the light was fading very fast and the brilliant and intense sunset and post-sunset colors were draining from the scene. But a turn or two up the road I came upon this overlook, with its view traversing the steep headlands toward the south to where the low hills of San Francisco just outside the Golden Gate were visible, Sutro Tower stood high above these hills, and subtle shades of blue and rose light were still visible.

So we pulled over, and I quickly got set up – again! – and made a few exposures in this dying light. This light is just about as subtle and difficult to photograph as it gets. In fact, I almost didn’t bother! On the scene, it was quite dark – darker than this rendition would suggest. And in that darker dusk, the haze that here partially conceals the San Francisco hills made them almost invisible.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: headlands

Departing Freighter

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Muir Beach Overlook, Sutro Tower, Dusk

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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.