Tag Archives: horizon

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

Ocean, Winter Light

March 2, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Intense winter sunlight reflects on the cloud-shadowed surface of the Pacific Ocean along the Big Sur coast, California

From my perspective, winter is by far the most interesting time to visit and, especially, to photograph along California’s Pacific Ocean coastline. While summer is the popular season for travel, during that time of year the ocean tends to be tranquil and the weather is often foggy. While it is likely to be warm and sunny elsewhere in California in the summer, along the coast it can feel more like winter! But winter along the coast brings much more diverse conditions and even some surprising warmth when conditions are just right. When large Pacific storms churn away far north in the Gulf of Alaska, lines of huge waves may crash on the shoreline. When the storms arrive, the coastal areas can be whipped by wind-driven rain. But between the storms there can be days of crystal clear weather.

That was the weather on the last day of January when we took a long round trip down the Big Sur coast and back. Aside from some (beautiful!) coastal haze that glowed in the midday light, it was a clear day and surprisingly warm for the most part. Along the Big Sur coastline the Pacific Coast Highway alternates between the coastal lowlands and a track that takes it high into the rugged mountains along the shoreline. Vast expanses of the surface of the Pacific are visible from the highest spots, and as we started down from one of these high points we saw the water, with the color and texture of molten metal, stretching away into the sun and towards the horizon, with a few shadows from thin clouds darkening the water near the shore.

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

Beyond the Golden Gate

January 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Pacific Ocean and western horizon outside the Golden Gate

A day trip to San Francisco began with a plan to see the David Hockney exhibition at the De Young Museum – important since the show was in its last few days. After spending several hours at this wonderful show, we came up with a vague plan to go somewhere and perhaps photograph something before dark. With a bit less than two hours to go and no more plan than that to go on, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to the north and were distracted by the idea of an espresso stop. By now there wasn’t a lot of time left before sunset, so we simply reversed course and headed back toward the bridge, where we did the “usual thing” and headed up into the Marin Headlands.

This is probably one of the very most popular area tourist destinations in the evening, since these hills north of the Golden Gate provide a classic and romantic view through the Golden Gate Bridge and back toward San Francisco – at least when it isn’t foggy. Since I know this area well, and in all kinds of conditions, at this point I was thinking more about simply enjoying the evening than about making photographs, and when we found a place to stop and park I left my camera equipment in the car. I looked toward The City and decided that I wasn’t going to photograph it… but as I looked to the west I saw some things that did seem a bit more interesting. At first I focused on the silhouette of more westerly cliffs as they dropped down to meet the Pacific. Then, after the sun had set, I decide to go ahead and just photograph the immense surface of the Pacific Ocean, reflecting sky colors and fading into the haze at the horizon.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Beach and Rocks, Pacific Ocean

January 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The incoming swell stretches toward that distant horizon beyond a few rocks on an Oregon beach

As we drove south along the Oregon coast in August we passed through Port Oxford. Just below this town the highway briefly curved landward before heading south again, traveling along the edge of a long and wide beach featuring impressive sea stacks and long strings of waves coming in off of the Pacific. I found a spot with a few dark, back-lit rocks to break up the uniformity of the horizontal lines of beach, surf, horizon, and sky, and shot straight toward the sun and its brilliant reflections on the surface of the ocean.

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

Cove and Wave

September 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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 Photography

Tag Archives: horizon

Ocean, Winter Light

Beyond the Golden Gate

Beach and Rocks, Pacific Ocean

Cove and Wave

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