Tag Archives: highlands

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

Cove and Wave

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Cove and Wave
Cove and Wave

Cove and Wave. Point Lobos State Reserve, California April 21, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A wave washes into a small cove and onto a pebble beach along California’s coastline south of Monterey

I went down to the Monterey, Carmel, and upper Big Sur coast on what seemed like the first warm-season day of the year. I have probably mentioned before that I prefer the off-season for photography – that time of year when there are storms, giant waves, clouds, rain, cold, and all sorts of interesting conditions. As odd as it may sound, I tend to almost stay away from the coast when the weather becomes too nice! (Of course, there is always fog. And in the summer along the Pacific coast, I do mean “always.”) At the first place I stopped to photograph I was feeling a bit of the letdown from the beautiful morning… but as I got out of my car and stood there in shirt-sleeve weather, warm and no wind, and looked out over the slightly misty coastline I started to feel a bit better about warm weather. :-)

A bit later I headed back toward Point Lobos, where I found a bit more surf than I might have expected, and the high tide had brought the water in close to the shoreline. Here I set up right at the edge of a low bluff above this pebble-filled beach, put a wide-angle lens on the camera, and made some photographs of the near-perfect curve of the waves entering the cove and washing up onto the beach, with sea stacks further down the coast line.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

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

Winter Dusk, Carmel Highlands Near Yankee Point

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Winter Dusk, Carmel Highlands Near Yankee Point
Winter Dusk, Carmel Highlands Near Yankee Point

Winter Dusk, Carmel Highlands Near Yankee Point. Carmel Highlands, California. January 2, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Winter dusk light and clouds over the Pacific Ocean at Carmel Highlands near Yankee Point, Pacific Coast Highway, California.

This is the companion image to the black and white photograph I posted yesterday, Before I made the exposures that I used to create that black and white landscape-orientation image, I first made a quick series of bracketed exposures in portrait mode. As I photographed, I knew that the dynamic range was going to be too large for a singe exposure so I quickly made a series of four exposures, from which I selected two that have blended to produce this image.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Yankee Point and Cypress, Carmel Highlands, Dusk

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Yankee Point and Cypress, Carmel Highlands, Dusk
Yankee Point and Cypress, Carmel Highlands, Dusk

Yankee Point and Cypress, Carmel Highlands, Dusk. Big Sur, California. January 2, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Carmel Highlands cypress trees stands at the edge of a cliff above the Pacific Ocean and Yankee Point at dusk.

Oddly, this is a photograph that sort of “didn’t make the cut” the first time I went through the batch shortly after making the photographs in early 2010. I had spent the afternoon photographing further south in the Big Sur area and several other photographs from the set turned out more as I expected – and this one seemed like a sort of problem child photograph, so I didn’t take the time needed to work with it. Eventually I forgot about it as I went on to other projects.

The photo had been almost a bit of a grab shot. As I was heading north back up the coast, thinking I had finished my shooting and was now on the way home, I was stunned to catch a glimpse of some intense post-sunset light as I rounded the bend at the head of this cove in Carmel Highlands. I wasn’t certain that I could find a composition and work out a photograph in the brief interval the probably remained before the light faded, but I quickly put on the wide angle zoom, attached the camera to the tripod, and headed over to the edge of the bluff. Exposure was a terrible problem because the brilliant and very colorful sky was quite bright, while the close side of the foreground tree was nearly black. I made managed to shoot the scene a few times, shifting from landscape to portrait mode and making three bracketed exposures of each composition.

When I got home and looked at the raw files I think I decided that it was just going to be too much work for too little reward, and I instead went to work on more promising shots from earlier in the afternoon. This week I came upon the series of shots again and wondered what I could do with them. My first inclination was to go with the color, and I did come up with a portrait orientation image in color that I will probably post before long. Then, as I began to work on the landscape mode image, I started to see it as having potential as a monochrome image. I tried it. I liked it. And here it is!

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

High Tide at Weston Beach, Approaching Storm

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High Tide at Weston Beach, Approaching Storm
High Tide at Weston Beach, Approaching Storm

High Tide at Weston Beach, Approaching Storm. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. January 10, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High tide and storm surf under clouds of an approaching winter storm at Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

This photograph was made from near the edge of Weston Beach during high tide on a day when a large Pacific storm was approaching. In more benign conditions and at low tide you would might exposed rocks and relatively quiet water in the area near the bottom of the frame – but not on this day! While I’ve ventured out onto the rocks at the left edge of the scene at low tide during the less-active summer months that would have been a very foolish thing to attempt on this day!

As with the photograph I posted yesterday, I thought that this might end up as a black and white image – and I still think it might. However, for now I have decided to go with the “barely-color” rendition. Because of the overcast and the haze created by the spray from the large surf, the colors in the original scene were very muted.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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