Tag Archives: hill

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

Tree and Pinnacle, Pacific Sunset

Leave a comment
Tree and Pinnacle, Pacific Sunset - The last evening light falls on a tree and a rocky pinnacle high above the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco, California.
The last evening light falls on a tree and a rocky pinnacle high above the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco, California.

Tree and Pinnacle, Pacific Sunset. Marin Headlands, California. August 29, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last evening light falls on a tree and a rocky pinnacle high above the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco, California.

On the return drive from our late-August sojourn to the Mendocino Coast, we returned to the Bay Area by the less efficient but more spectacular route and drove the coast on Highway 1, the “coast highway.” For the most part the road hugs the coastline, alternately dipping down to the shoreline and climbing to the tops of very tall coastal bluffs, and occasionally running inland for a short distance. We stopped in Point Reyes Station for dinner (and we can now heartily recommend Osteria Stellina!) and then continued on – and as we did I began to get a sense of where we might be for the golden hour light. It seemed like we would likely pass Stinson Beach – which seemed fine, since I didn’t have an interest in photographing there – and be somewhere south of there in the Marin Headlands.

As we ascended the high and steep road perched along the cliffs south of Stinson Beach, a lot of stuff started happening all at once. I knew that we were getting very close to “that” light, when we spotted a lone coyote along a ridge above the road… right below a large ridgeline rock and above which the nearly full moon had just appeared. Really! So we obviously had to stop and see what we could do with that subject – which turned out to be more difficult that I had thought. At about this time other likely “targets” started to appear, and I photographed back towards Stinson Beach, directly into the sun-lit haze from northern California forest fires. Then I looked closer to my location and saw this windswept tree catching the last bit of light, with a single rugged pinnacle behind it, and beyond that the surface of the Pacific Ocean, fading into the mist and picking up the pink tones of the setting sun.

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.

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

Home Bay, Drakes Estero

Leave a comment
Home Bay, Drakes Estero
“Home Bay, Drakes Estero” — Fog rolls in over Drakes Estero beyond Home Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore

This quick late-July visit to Point Reyes was an opportunity to re-learn a few lessons about going out to make photographs. I drove up to San Francisco, where my wife was to be involved in a music performance — the plan being to drop her off and then drive on over the Golden Gate Bridge to Point Reyes. It is often cold and windy there, even in the summer, but this was a very warm period and it looked like the coast might be clear of fog. With this in mind, I planned to either visit the Limantour Beach or else hike out towards Drakes Bay.

I should have sensed that things were about to evolve in ways that I had not planned for when, during a brief stop at the Point Reyes visitor center, the rangers announced that the road to Limantour was closed since a fire had just started in the area! With that option gone, I figured that Drakes Bay would be my objective, and I had images of afternoon and evening light on this day of little or no fog. I drove on out to the Estero trailhead where it was, in fact, quite sunny, though a bit windy. I loaded up my camera pack with a few lenses and a tripod, and set out towards Drakes Head, thinking I might make it there for late afternoon light. Soon I saw the telltale puffs of incoming fog overhead, and I came around a bend in the trail to see that the fog had already moved in to the west and over Drakes Bay. Fortunately, iin most cases I would rather photograph in “interesting” weather than in supposed perfect blue sky weather.

At a point where the trail descended to cross a dike at the head of Home Bay, I saw this conjunction of near and far forms, with the distant bluffs under the incoming fog, so I stopped to make a few photographs before moving on. To make a potentially long story a bit shorter, the temperature quickly dropped and the wind picked up to levels that made photography increasingly difficult. I managed to work with one other scene that included a curving snag in front of the bay, but it was already becoming difficult to find a calm moment in the wind to click the shutter. I kept going, finally reaching the trail junction that heads off towards Drakes Head, only to realize that I would never get all the way out there in time to return before dark. Cutting the hike short after a bit more than an hour and a half of hiking, I began to retrace my steps back to the trailhead.

In the end, this is really the only photograph that I came away with – despite carrying that fully loaded camera pack out and back! But this reminded me of a first lesson, namely that it is worth the effort even if I only come back with a single shot that I like. This one, to me, evokes the relative isolation and quiet of this spot in the upper reaches of the calm waters of Drakes Bay, with the fog bank beginning to assemble across the distant bluffs. A second lesson is that sometimes on a photographic quest, it is OK to simply enjoy the surroundings. A practical photographer can remind himself or herself that scouting is a good thing, and that things not photographed this time may well be on a future visit. And a long-time hiker can – and did – remind himself that sometimes it is just fine to leave the camera in the pack and just enjoy the wind and the space.

Leave a comment or question using the form. (Click the title to see the full article and to comment if you are viewing it on the home page.)

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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay

2 Comments

Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay - Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.
Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.

Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay. San Francisco, California. July 14, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.

This is certainly not a unique viewpoint for photographing the Golden Gate (and the bridge named after it) and the rest of San Francisco Bay… but I keep returning anyway. While the principal physical elements of the scene – Marin headlands, bridge, the City, bridges, Yerba Buena Island, the East Bay – the conditions of light and atmosphere change constantly. The variations in the fog alone could be the subject of a book, I’m sure! It can come from the west (summer) or the east (winter), it can be high or low (or both at once!), thin or thick, opaque or luminous, static or moving quickly, illuminated by sun or by artificial light at night, and more.

On this morning it was a combination of several of those. There was a sort of thin fog/haze at the lower levels, but the thicker fog was quite high, above the bridge towers and even a bit above my position in the Marin headlands. The fog was beginning to break up, starting to the east and gradually moving westward toward the coast, and when I made this photograph large beams of diffused light were coming through the fog deck and lighting areas around the San Francisco waterfront and even on the bay waters. Lining up the elements of the photograph wasn’t terribly hard once I found the composition I liked, but then I waited for boats for move into or out of the frame (see a large freighter passing between towers of the distant Bay Bridge) and for the light to appear in (as close to) the right places (as one can hope for).

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Towers, Early Evening

Leave a comment
Sandstone Towers, Early Evening
“Sandstone Towers, Early Evening” — Sandstone towers and desert terrain, Arches National Park

I made this photograph within minutes of entering Arches National Park for the very first time. I have written before that this was my very first time photographing in Utah – yes, embarrassing, but true! The downside of this is that I now really wish that I had taken the time to travel here much earlier. But the upside is that I had the rare experience of encountering a completely new and, for me, unanticipated landscape for the first time.

Before departing for Utah – where we visited a veritable smorgasbord of locations – I had done almost no research beyond figuring out where the nearest lodging was. In fact, even once we were in the state I was still figuring out how to get from one location to another. There are perhaps several reasons for this approach, but one was that I do not necessarily want to go to a new place with overly strong ideas about what I should photograph nor about how I should photograph it. I prefer to get there, look around, try to get the “feeling” of the place, and begin making the photographs that I see. We arrived in Moab late in the day and checked into a motel. There was still some light left so we figured we should go somewhere… and Arches is very close! So the decision was made, and off we went. By the time we reached the Park Avenue area not far from the entrance I was stunned by what I was seeking. (It helped that we arrived at the beginning of “golden hour,” but I digress…) There were huge sandstone walls, thin fins of rock, tall towers, some with boulders perched on top – this seemed about as close to an “impossible landscape” as any I have seen. Frankly, it was overwhelming. We passed Park Avenue and drove ahead a bit to where the view opened up to this astonishing panorama, at which point we pulled out and I began making photographs, including this one that includes towers and fins backlit by the late afternoon light under thin clouds.

COMMENT OR QUESTION? Scroll down to the comment form.

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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.