Tag Archives: island

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

Dusk Clouds, Pacific Ocean

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Dusk Clouds, Pacific Ocean
Colorful dusk sky and clouds along the Nothern California coast at Crescent City.

Dusk Clouds, Pacific Ocean. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful dusk sky and clouds along the Nothern California coast at Crescent City.

This was an evening of beautiful light, a surprise or two, and at least one missed opportunity that will be hard to find again. We were along the far northern coast of California, primarily to photograph late-spring redwood forest subjects… but it is hard to ignore the Pacific Ocean when it is right next door! In the evening we headed to a nearby coastal area with rocky islands and seas stacks and an open view of the western horizon. — and there were clouds to catch the last colorful light. I photographed right through sunset, until the light was becoming quite dim.

That last point — “photographed right though sunset” — is important. The light show doesn’t necessarily end with the sun drops below the horizon. In fact, some of the most astonishing light often comes quite a bit later as the colors deepen and begin to change from warm sunset tones to the bluer tones of night. The sun was gone in my location, but somewhere far to the west it was reflecting upwards to illuminate the clouds from below, coloring thin clouds and wispy bits of virga.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Evening Sea Stacks

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Evening Sea Stacks
Sea stacks and surf on an overcast evening, Crescent City, California.

Evening Sea Stacks. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sea stacks and surf on an overcast evening, Crescent City, California.

The circumstances of this photograph were just a bit unusual, and it is not quite the photograph that I thought I’d be making when I recently visited the coastline at Crescent City. Because the days are so long right now, we decided to go out for an early dinner, planning to head back out into the field to photograph an hour or so before sunset. The plans was not totally solid, but I had this spot in mind as one of the possibilities, as it more or less in Crescent City. We finished dinner and it was still too early for the photography I had in mind, so we did a bit of exploring before we ended up back at this post.

I had photographed these very rocks a couple of years ago, and this time I was imagining something with sunset light, the colorful ocean and sky, and perhaps some dramatic shadows. The conditions had something else in mind. To the north a line of clouds was arriving, likely the result of a weak incoming cold front. When it became apparent that the brilliantly colorful sunset I imagined was not to be (though something else interest did eventually happen) I rethought the mood I wanted to suggest and began to see the appeal in this framing of the scene, focusing on the foreground island with the more distant sea stacks closer to the top of the frame.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Shoreline Trees, Morning Light

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Shoreline Trees, Morning Light
Morning light on shoreline trees at a backcountry Yosemite National Park lake.

Shoreline Trees, Morning Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on shoreline trees at a backcountry Yosemite National Park lake.

Our group spent the better part of a week camped near this northern Yosemite Lake, exploring it, its two companion lakes, and the surrounding high country. We camped in the forest a ways back from this lake, but it was only a minute away and thus became a daily subject for photography, especially in the morning when the light come over the ridges to our east and backlight the shoreline trees.

This subject, in this light, presented a pair of interesting challenges of the sort that you only learn to appreciate after doing landscape photography in such places. The first came from shooting toward the light from the edge of the lake. Photographers know the issues with flare that can result from light hitting the lens directly — but multiply that times two when the light comes from above and from the reflections from the lake’s surface. The gyrations necessary to block both often prove interesting. The second challenge was… mosquitos! Not just that the fiends, biting little devils annoyed us constantly, but also that their blurry forms tend to appear in photographs when viewed closely. You don’t know the meaning of fun until you’ve cloned a few hundred of them out of a photograph!

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Fog and Reeds

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Fog and Reeds
Dense winter tule fog, tule islands, and a wetland pond.

Fog and Reeds. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense winter tule fog, tule islands, and a wetland pond.

From time to time I like to do visual experiments, seeing how minimal the content of the image can be and still work. Sometimes these photograph balance on an edge between portrayal of the real and pure color and form. I feel that images like this can portray or evoke the mood of a subject, even if they don’t include much detail at all. The idea is to suggest more than to tell.

The winter tule fogs of California’s Central Valley often do a fine job of minimizing landscape details. (They also do a fine job of minimizing the details of the roads I drive to get there, but I digress…) These shallow fog layers settle in during the winter and can be some of the thickest fogs you’ll ever encounter. Oddly, because they are so shallow, sometimes your vision straight upwards is barely impeded at all — and as I made this photograph the nearly-full moon was clearly visible overhead. But the view out into the landscape was radically limited, hardly extending more than a few tens of feet and muting details of closer subjects.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.