Tag Archives: highway

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

Foggy Evening Near Rocky Point

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Foggy Evening Near Rocky Point - Evening fog obscures the view of the Big Sur coastline near Rocky Point.
Evening fog obscures the view of the Big Sur coastline near Rocky Point.

Foggy Evening Near Rocky Point. Big Sur Coast, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog obscures the view of the Big Sur coastline near Rocky Point.

This photograph was made on my birthday, believe it or not! We had headed down to the Monterey area for dinner, and had a few extra hours in the late afternoon, so we decided to take a quick jaunt down the coast towards the Rocky Point and (almost) Bixby Bridge area. Of course, a little thing like a birthday celebration isn’t going to make me leave my camera gear at home, so this was a fine excuse to do a little photography along the coast highway.

The light was variable and challenging, largely because it was late in the day and the fog bank was moving right up against the coast. While in a few places it pulled back enough to allow a bit of diffused light to land on the coastal bluffs, beaches, and even the water, in most places the fog line was just a bit inland. As we drove south we were mostly in fog, but occasionally as we passed a bit further from the shoreline to follow the contours of a creek drainage or a bay we found a bit of sun. We finally stopped at this high overlook that provides a view back toward Rocky Point, the peninsula at the upper part of the frame, and I made a few exposures.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Morning, Near Olmsted Point

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Morning, Near Olmsted Point - Morning light on granite and sparse trees near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park
Morning light on granite and sparse trees near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park

Morning, Near Olmsted Point. Yosemite National Park, California. July 28, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on granite and sparse trees near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park

This is another photograph from 2011 on a late-July trip to the Yosemite high country along Tioga Pass Road. The photo was made in morning light in the general area of Olmsted Point, where a series of granite domes and ridges lines up roughly parallel to Tenaya Canyon and in the morning the brightly back-lit haze can create a sense of spatial depth and mute the details of the formations further away.

I suppose that backlit trees like this one are a bit of a theme for me – yet another Sierra subject I cannot resist photographing! The central tree is, obviously, just one of many thousands of trees right here but since it was the closest one it served as my subject. The tree is set in granite slabs topped with glacial erratics left behind when the last glaciation ended, and the slabs are mostly very solid, making the it all the more amazing that such a large and upright tree can grow here. Another ridge rises in the middle distance, and beyond it yet another ridge whose details are nearly invisible in the morning light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees and Granite, Morning Light

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Trees and Granite, Morning Light - First morning light on trees and granite slabs near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.
First morning light on trees and granite slabs near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

Trees and Granite, Morning Light. Yosemite National Park, California. August 12, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First morning light on trees and granite slabs near Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph a year ago, almost exactly, in August of 2011, while on a trip of several days devoted to photographing the High Sierra, mostly in the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite. A year later I do not remember all of the details of this morning, though I recall that I had gone very early to the Olmsted Point area to photograph the glacial erratic boulders and some rugged trees growing on the granite slabs found in the area. Perhaps this was among the first photographs I made, before heading off to shoot my primary subject, since the series it comes from includes the very first light to strike these trees, while its angle was still small enough to hit the trees but not the rock.

When I came upon this photograph in the old raw file archive this week, one thing that struck me is the fact that it does include a Yosemite icon (seen from an iconic angle that is often photographed), yet that icon is almost an afterthought and most certainly not the primary subject of the photograph. I posted something here yesterday about photographing icons (“Photographing Icons or Not”), and one of the ideas that you might take away from that post is that it is possible to see iconic sights in ways that do not necessarily repeat the familiar iconic views. (Not to fear, I have the iconic view of this subject, too.) I’m willing to bet that I was thinking a whole lot more about the warm first light on the foreground trees, the way it contrasted with the cooler blue tones of the deep canyon and shadowed ridges beyond, and the texture and shapes of the foreground granite slabs that are so characteristic of this part of the Sierra.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.

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Rocky Point, Sea Stacks

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Rocky Point, Sea Stacks - Sea stacks near Rocky Point on a foggy evening along the Big Sur coastline.
Sea stacks near Rocky Point on a foggy evening along the Big Sur coastline.

Rocky Point, Sea Stacks. Big Sur Coastline, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sea stacks near Rocky Point on a foggy evening along the Big Sur coastline.

This photograph was made along the Big Sur coastline roughly in the area between the Rocky Creek and Bixby Creek bridges, about as far south as we managed to get while wandering around before a 8:00 p.m. dinner reservation back in Monterey. (Hey, it was my birthday!) The Peninsula extending into the Pacific in the upper section of the frame could be any of probably hundreds of similar peninsulas where the steep hills of the Big Sur coast drop to meet the ocean – but this one happens to be Rocky Point. The foreground sea stack could be any of thousands (or tens of thousands? I see perhaps a dozen or more in this scene alone…) of similar features found almost anywhere you look along this coast.

The light was both interesting and challenging. In most cases, I would rather try to photograph this interesting, foggy atmosphere than shoot perfect blue-sky conditions. (The latter can occur, though not as often as photography might suggest! Fog is more common.) It was very late in the day, probably around 7:00 p.m, and the sun was low and mostly hidden behind the off-shore fog bank. Here and there the fog backed off a bit from the shoreline or thinned a bit, and slightly more light appeared. The sea stack was in one such spot, and around and beyond the point there is also a bit more light.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.