A building beneath the west end of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, in foggy morning light.
If a troll lived beneath the west end of the Bay Bridge, this would be the building. ;-)
This block-shaped building with windows reflecting the light from thinning fog over the San Francisco Bay – across the Embarcadero – sits almost directly below the west anchorage of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, which you can see just a bit of near the very top of the frame. For me there is something appealing about the angular simplicity of this building with its rectangular windows divided into rectangular panes, and with almost no decorative touches at all.
An imaginary landscape photographed in San Francisco.
It has been a while since I’ve posted an “imaginary landscape” photograph – so here goes. This is a single exposure, everything that appears in the frame was there when I made the exposure. Some significant post processing was done to this image, but it was not constructed in post.
Beyond that, I’ll leave it to your imagination to think about what is going on here.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Dawn light illuminates the Jeffrey pine covered ridge of a volcanic dome in the Mono Craters complex, California.
I have a favorite personal spot where I often stop on my way to photograph at South Tufa at Mono Lake. It is spot that you would likely pass right by since, save for a bit of a panoramic view, there is nothing immediately impressive about it, and because you would probably be on your way to someplace else, namely the formations at South Tufa.
On this late June morning I took a break from photographing in the Tuolumne/Tioga Pass area to shoot a bit around Mono Lake, where I had it in mind to shoot certain high desert subjects that I’ve worked on in the past. As I shot those other subjects I’ve often looked up at this particular ridge, been impressed by it, and wondered how to make a photograph of it. When I pulled up at this spot I first intended to shoot a scene that appears to the west, but it turned out to not be quite what I imagined it might be on this morning. Ah, well – that happens! So I turned my camera in a different direction and photographed a somewhat different subject as dawn approached with some very interesting clouds in the sky to the east. As I worked on this I kept glancing up at this volcanic ridge, thinking that the clouds behind it might silhouette the trees along the skyline… but still finding the light too flat and boring. I actually made a photo or two, but wasn’t enthusiastic about it. I turned back to the other subject. A few minutes later I looked back up at this ridge and saw that the first light of early morning sun was glancing across the ridge and lighting up the Jeffrey pines that grow on its slopes. I quickly pivoted around and made a few exposures of the scene in the “good light.”
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Morning light glances across the surface of Tenaya Lake, sprinkled with pollen, and illuminated shoreline trees and boulder, Yosemite National Park, California.
Shortly after the sun cleared the surrounding peaks, the morning light slants across the pollen-covered surface of Tenaya Lake to illuminate two small trees and their larger neighbors, along with a small peninsula and some shoreline boulders. This is an area in which I have photographed in the past, but this time I arrived much earlier in the day and the water level was still considerably higher than later in the season due to the heavy snow melt run-off that had peaked only a week or two earlier.
