high key | G Dan Mitchell Photography

Upper Yosemite Fall in Mist — The mist of an autumn rainstorm shrouds upper Yosemite Falls.

The mist of an autumn rainstorm shrouds upper Yosemite Falls.

This photograph was made on a very rainy early November morning, when the previously-dormant Yosemite Falls had sprung dramatically back to life following two days of rain.

This was a very difficult photo to take and it has been a difficult photo to work with in post-processing. I shot it with a very long lens (400mm on full-frame) as mist and rain swirled around the top of the upper falls, most of the time almost completely obscuring the waterfall. Occasionally the clouds and rain would thin a bit and I would make a few shots. The complexity of the post processing has several parts. First, the dynamic range of the photograph is very small. (Usually we struggle with the opposite problem – a dynamic range that is too big!) For this reason I had to make some decisions about whether and how much to expand this range in post, and also about just where the “normal” brightness should be. Second, the color saturation is so weak that the photograph almost appears to be a black and white image, but it is indeed a color photograph… with extremely muted colors.

I’m looking forward to working on making a print of this one. I’m certain that it will be a challenge, but I think that it may work well as a print.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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“Cliffs, Surf, and Fog” — Fog and winter light on cliffs and Pacific coast surf south of San Francisco.

I have always been fascinated by light shining directly through the atmosphere, coming straight on towards me – the brighter and more luminous the glow the better. You frequently find me aiming my camera almost straight toward the sun. (I’ve become a master at shading lenses with hands, hat, pieces of paper, you name it.) I also love atmospheric recession, the illumination of distance by the haze, as more distant subjects lose contrast and detail. This scene had all of those things, and perhaps even more.

I had been driving the coast highway (highway 1) between Santa Cruz and San Francisco on this winter day, and in places it was very foggy – but here it was the kind of fog that, while dense near the ground, is shallow enough that the light from the sun shines though and can even make looking at the clouds almost unbearable. I pulled over at a place where it looked like I might be able to walk out onto a shoreline bluff high above the water and see over the edge to the water and cliffs below and beyond. A saw this line-up of receding cliffs dropping to the surf and decided to shoot along them towards the sun. (I was surprised to find later that hidden in the fog is a small creek dropping from one section of the cliff in a small water fall.)

This high key image is a bit different from what I usually do. The fog was backlit by some fairly bright sunlight and, although it is nearly impossible to see in this little jpg image, there is a lot of detail in the frothy white surface of the water on the right side.

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Cliffs, Surf, and Fog – California Coastline

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