Tag Archives: light

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Coastal Valley, Morning Light

May 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light streams across ridges and illuminates mist filling a coastal valley along the Big Sur coastline of California

This might be described as “yet another in a series” of photographs made along the Pacific Coast Highway south of Monterey, in which I look for canyons filled with misty early morning light, aim my camera up into the canyon, and see what I can come up with. The elements are: fog that it thin enough to pass light, early morning back-light spilling over the tops of coastal ridges, canyons and valleys with many overlapping ridges, lush and green coastal vegetation. The variations are endless. The challenges are finding canyons with just the right combinations of these elements and, of course, shooting straight into the light, a favorite technique of mine.

This little valley is one that you would most likely pass by and not even see, since it is small and in a section of the coast where you attention is likely to be drawn the other way and toward the Pacific ocean. I’ve seen this spot a few times as I have driven past, but I had assumed that it might not be photograph-able given some power lines and the scarcity of places to pull over and park. This time I looked a bit closer and thought I saw a way to shoot from alongside the highway and perhaps avoid the wires and I did see a small pull-out nearby, so I turned around at the next opportunity, came back, and spent a bit of time working this scene.

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

Aspens, Boulder Mountain, Evening

May 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn aspens in front of rugged landscape of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

This was an especially beautiful evening on the shoulder of the Boulder Mountain area of Utah. Six months earlier, on our first visit to this state, we had passed over Boulder Mountain early in April, before the spring leaves had appeared on the tremendous aspen groves found here. I imagined that this must be quite a sight in the fall when all of those aspens would inevitably change to yellow and gold and red and orange. With this in mind we planned our fall visit to cross this area again in early October, figuring that this would be about the right time for fall color.

It turns out that we probably missed the absolute peak of color – partly because the change happens on a slightly different schedule in these Utah mountains than in “my” Sierra Nevada, and because the transition seemed to occur a bit early this year, perhaps due to dry conditions earlier in the year. When we arrived we found that at the highest elevations the trees were already devoid of leaves. However, as we passed around the shoulder of the range to turn toward Torrey, we came upon some extensive and beautiful stands of colorful trees just before sunset and stopped to make photographs. This photograph looks across nearby aspens in the shadow of high clouds and beyond to the sandstone terrain in the area between Capitol Reef National Park and the small town of Boulder, an area that we finally got to investigate a few days later after crossing over the high country of Capitol Reef. At the time I made this photograph there was a nice soft haze – my kind of conditions! – and high clouds to the west were creating a lightscape alternating shadows and sun that played across the terrain.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Calero Oaks, Fog

April 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

This is an older photograph that I sort of “rediscovered” while going through older files recently. It was due for a bit of additional work, reformatting to fit my current preferred 4:3 print ratio, and the updated web border and text that you see in the online versions of my photographs. (And, to answer the question that comes up from time to time, my fine art prints do not include the text found in the online photographs!)

Although I no longer visit there quite as often, this area became a favorite location of mine a few years ago, especially during the winter months when morning fog frequently burns off and reveals the newly-green winter landscape of the California grassland and oak forests. The photograph was made on one of these very mornings, as I had hiked the familiar trail along the top of this ridge, to find myself on the border between fog in the valleys and clearing on the ridge, with the edge of the fog drifting through these trees and the sun backlighting this misty atmosphere.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Forest Light

April 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Misty morning light shines through coast redwood forest, Northern California

On this late-March morning I headed north over the Golden Gate Bridge, hoping to photograph the trillium bloom at Muir Woods National Monument. Every year this event seems to sneak up on me, and I often just barely catch it before the bloom ends or even miss it. I had heard that the flowers were already in bloom a week earlier, so I wasn’t sure what I would find – but I did get the chance to photograph these flowers that seem to announce the arrival of spring in the redwood forest.

There is a particular trail at this National Monument where I usually go to find the trillium flowers. They seem to like the slightly more open light of this hillside trail, and as I ascend it I usually find quite a few of the flowers… if I arrive at the right time. Every so often I remind myself to look in the other direction, too, since there the hillside drops off steeply, running all the way down to the creek at the bottom of the canyon. The elevated perspective provides a somewhat unusual view into the forest. One challenge of shooting redwoods is that so often you are angling the camera/lens up, and consequently have to deal with various challenges including bright sky appearing in the scene and the effects of converging perspective line. But from this trail it is possible to point the camera horizontally and shoot right into the forest itself, far above the base of the trees down in the canyon below.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: light

Coastal Valley, Morning Light

Aspens, Boulder Mountain, Evening

Calero Oaks, Fog

Redwood Forest Light

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