Tag Archives: light

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

Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point

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Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point - Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California
Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California

Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point. Big Sur, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California.

Talk about photographic geekiness – we ended up making photographs on my birthday! Because of a variety of factors, this turned out to be a bit of a low key birthday this year – despite some earlier plans to do all sorts of wild and crazy things. (Completing the JMT or going to Alaska will perhaps wait a bit… ;-) After a quiet and lazy morning we decided to head down to the Monterey area for a birthday dinner, which turned out to be quite nice by the way. (Thanks, Patty!)

Since we arrived a few hours before our dinner reservation. After stalling around a bit, thinking about this and that option, we decided to do the usual, obvious thing and head south on the Highway 1, the “coast highway,” into the upper portion of the Big Sur coastline area. While it is a very familiar area and one I visit a lot, it is never the same twice – all of the variables of light and atmosphere and season and weather are in play and you almost never know quite what you’ll find. On this early evening, the most important factor was that the edge of the ocean fog was positioned very close to the shore. This meant that sometimes it extended just a bit inland, creating light that ranged from slightly luminous to gray and murky, while in other areas it was just offshore, allowing light to hit the coast and even to light the surface of the ocean a bit. Here at the cove where the creek comes down Soberanes Canyon to meet the ocean, we found one of those boundaries – quite gray along the immediate coast in the distance, sunlight on the bluffs and hills at the right, and that wonderful boundary light in between. And above that, the barely perceptible difference between the soft clouds of fog and the light blue of the late-day sky.

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

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur

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Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur - Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.
Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur. Big Sur Coastline, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Having a couple of free hours late in the day, we ended up driving down the upper section of the Big Sur coastline below Monterey, to the area around the Rocky Creek and Bixby Bridges. (Though we stopped a bit short of the latter.) The light was alternately gray and murky, soft and misty, and sharp and bright – the fog was lurking near the coast, and depending upon which bend we drove around it covered the coast highway and the inland hills or it ended just off the coast.

This kind of coastal light creates some of the most transitory and ephemeral effects of all the subjects I shoot, similar perhaps to shooting the clouds of a dissipating winter storm among the aretes and spires of Sierra peaks. The variables in play are numerous: the point of the fog line off the shore or inland, whether or not the fog is thin enough to allow a bit of light so shine directly through, the appearing and disappearing pools of offshore light where the clouds thin, and the motion of the sea itself. Often I’ll spot what looks like absolutely gorgeous light, stop, grab gear and set up… and then look up to see that it is gone. Or that it is appearing in some other location where there was nothing a moment ago.

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.
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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: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Looking In

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Looking In - Almost everyone in a group of people looks into a conservatory courtyard while waiting for it to open.
Almost everyone in a group of people looks into a conservatory courtyard while waiting for it to open.

Looking In. San Francisco, California. August 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Almost everyone in a group of people looks into a conservatory courtyard while waiting for it to open.

Apologies for this title, but I did not get the name of the building (perhaps today I’ll do that), “A group of people looking into a courtyard with one guy looking the other way” seemed a bit too long, and I ran out of creativity before posting. I suppose there is the potential here for incorporating some quip about San Francisco “summer” weather as well – on this lovely “summer” afternoon there were high clouds and fog and it was trying to rain! :-)

I had another afternoon to kill wandering around San Francisco yesterday afternoon. My general target was something like street photography, though it also incorporated this little project I have to photograph downtown buildings from odd angles and render the images in black and white. I had been working on the latter and was heading back to where I would have dinner (and running a few minutes late) when I saw this little cluster of people crowded around what looked like the entrance to this glassed in courtyard filled with palm trees and some tables. Any sort of odd little scene like this – quite different from the general rush of people in the downtown area – catches my eye and often seems like it might make a photograph. Here I had the group of people crowded together to work with, along with the classical architecture of the building and courtyard. So I did what I often might do with such a scene: I stopped and quickly made one initial photograph so as not to miss it entirely, and then I remained and watched for something interesting or out-of-place to occur. When the fellow at the right separated himself from the larger group, my first reaction was a bit of frustration that he had broken up the group of people facing away, but in the end he makes the photograph more interesting to me than it would have been otherwise.

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.
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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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Deer Graze Below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Tuolumne Meadows

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Deer Graze Below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Tuolumne Meadows - Deer graze in the early evening in Tuolumne Meadows below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park.
Deer graze in the early evening in Tuolumne Meadows below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park.

Deer Graze Below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite National Park, California. July 11, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Deer graze in the early evening in Tuolumne Meadows below Lembert Dome and Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park.

Although compressed here by the use of the telephoto lens, this view of Tuolumne Meadows, Lembert Dome, and Mount Dana is one of the first that you might see when arriving at the Meadows from the west – at least if you happen to look towards Dana after dropping to the meadow and rounding the first gentle curve to the left past a group of trees that grows along the roadside and at the edge of the meadow. This alignment of Lembert and Dana is one that I always look for when I arrive.

Perhaps because I often see it when I arrived at Tuolumne, and because I most often arrive in the morning, my mental image of this view usually includes haze that makes the view of Dana opaque, especially in when the haze is back-lit by this morning light. Oddly, I don’t often look across the meadows from this point of view during the evening, when I suppose I’m more likely to be further up the meadow and closer to the Tuolumne River itself. On this July evening, however, I did happen to be here just before sunset. (I don’t recall for sure, but I’ll bet that I was returning from photographing somewhere to the west.) When I saw that familiar alignment of Lembert and Dana in the evening light, I stopped. I don’t think that I noticed the herd of deer along the meadow at the bottom of the frame until I was set up.

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.