Tag Archives: landscape

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Point Arena Lighthouse

September 15, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Point Arena Lighthouse stands atop rugged coastal bluffs along the northern California coast.

I have only visited the Point Arena Lighthouse one other time. This is symptomatic of the fact that I have overlooked the far northern coast of California. I suppose I’ve been too busy with the Sierra and other areas in this state full of visual riches, but since “discovering” the northern coastal areas I have become much more interested in photographing there.

This visit was during the middle of the day and the sky was almost completely clear – not exactly stirring conditions for photographing such a scene. So I spent some time looking at locations and angles and possible composition, at least partly with an eye to returning yet again but during a time of more interesting lighting – this location might be spectacular in the right late day light, and dawn isn’t out of the question.

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

Blue Water, Beach and Bluffs, Mendocino

September 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Beach and shoreline bluffs above the blue water of Mendocino Bay, California.

This photograph was made on the beach along the shoreline of Mendocino Bay, beneath the tall bluffs that line the area. The land extends to the west and curves a bit to the south, allowing me to photograph back along the curving beach, toward the inlet of the river that drains into the bay and the forested hills beyond. The light was interesting – fog was coming in along the coast and was overhead at my camera position, but clear just inland of me. This created soft and somewhat gray light on the foreground water, but allowed the further hills and forest to be in the light. It also made the interesting reflection on the calm water more visible.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Utah

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

September 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Red cliffs and rocks on a ledge at Park Avenue, Arches National Park.

I made this photograph fairly early in the morning at the Park Avenue area of Arches National Park. While morning might was hitting the walls behind my camera position, the walls in front of me were still in fairly deep shade. However, as the sun rose, its light began to come over the tops of these tall sandstone walls and spill down into the canyon. As the morning wore on, the light/shadow line began to move back closer to this wall, first illuminating the ledge and the fallen rocks in holds and then beginning to highlight edges of some of the cracks in the wall itself.

The Park Avenue area seems like one of the most accessible areas of this park being only a short distance inside the park boundaries and being very close to the roadway. The area is essentially a canyon between two nearly parallel walls of sandstone, often topped with remarkable towers and other features as the canyon descends toward where it opens up into sage brush country below. At this particular hour of this particular morning, as wonderful as that scene was, the light shooting down the canyon was only so-so, so I looked around, put on a long lens, and photographed smaller vignettes of the landscape such as this one.

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

Rugged Rocks, Soberanes

September 9, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rugged rocks and surf along the Big Sur coastline at Soberanes Creek.

I’m not certain if this spot has a real name or not, but it seems like it might be something like Soberanes Cove or perhaps Soberanes Bay, since it is at the outlet of the stream that comes down to the Soberanes Canyon from tall, steep coastal hills before entering the Pacific in this rugged, rocky area of the northern Big Sur coast not far below Carmel. Here, as the Coast Highway heads south, it makes a bit of an inland turn to cross the stream and then turns back toward the ocean to rise over another prominence that extends further toward the water. As it does so, a view opens back across the coastal bluff and over this rock-filled section of water toward the rocky coastline.

This was an “interesting” light evening along the coast – in some ways very difficult light, but with short-lived sections of more light that was very beautiful. The fog was hugging the shore line, sometimes extending a bit inland to the coastal hills, cutting off all of the late-day light. But occasionally, where the shore curves inland a bit, as in this cove, the overcast opened up a bit and perhaps even pulled away from the immediately coast and allowed some filtered light to strike the rocks and the water and the shoreline.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: landscape

Point Arena Lighthouse

Blue Water, Beach and Bluffs, Mendocino

Ledge With Fallen Rocks

Rugged Rocks, Soberanes

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