Tag Archives: lobos

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Imaginary Landscapes, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelicans and Cormorants – Point Lobos

January 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Something a bit different today – I’m bundling three wildlife photographs into a single post. As I queue this message in advance on an early September morning, it appears that I have enough photographs ready for posting to carry me through October! I think I can afford to put three in this post!

All three were made from the same point on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean at Point Lobos, where I had gone – on Labor Day! – primarily to do landscape/seascape photography. It was an interesting and slightly unusual day. Tropical monsoonal moisture had been streaming over the area for a few days, which is not quite a typical pattern in this area, and the morning started out cloudy. Although it was Labor Day, a bit day for travel and tourism, I arrived early enough that things were still quiet.

On a more typical Point Lobos shooting day, at least one without fog, I would likely complete my work and leave by or well before noon. But the broken overcast allowed interesting and filtered light to continue well into the early afternoon, so I stuck around. After shooting in the forest along the north shore – much easier in filtered than in direct light – I decided I would make a loop along the high bluffs on my way back to my car. I came to this spot just as a very large flock of pelicans floated past below, barely skimming the tops of the almost glassy-calm ocean. With filtered top-light and a good vantage point, I decided to put on the long lens and see what might fly by. Here are a couple of photographs of pelicans and cormorants flying right above the water.

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

Cove and Wave

September 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A wave washes into a small cove and onto a pebble beach along California’s coastline south of Monterey

I went down to the Monterey, Carmel, and upper Big Sur coast on what seemed like the first warm-season day of the year. I have probably mentioned before that I prefer the off-season for photography – that time of year when there are storms, giant waves, clouds, rain, cold, and all sorts of interesting conditions. As odd as it may sound, I tend to almost stay away from the coast when the weather becomes too nice! (Of course, there is always fog. And in the summer along the Pacific coast, I do mean “always.”) At the first place I stopped to photograph I was feeling a bit of the letdown from the beautiful morning… but as I got out of my car and stood there in shirt-sleeve weather, warm and no wind, and looked out over the slightly misty coastline I started to feel a bit better about warm weather. :-)

A bit later I headed back toward Point Lobos, where I found a bit more surf than I might have expected, and the high tide had brought the water in close to the shoreline. Here I set up right at the edge of a low bluff above this pebble-filled beach, put a wide-angle lens on the camera, and made some photographs of the near-perfect curve of the waves entering the cove and washing up onto the beach, with sea stacks further down the coast line.

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

Surf, Weston Beach

March 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Long exposure photograph of surf and boulders, Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve

This part of a small series of photographs I made at Weston Beach, Point Lobos on a mid-January day. The location is very familiar to me, to the point that I recognize many specific rocks and formations here. I have photographed quite a few times, but I continue to find new things to see here. Part of that is from visiting in different seasons and conditions of weather and light, part from looking more closely, and part from thinking of different ways to photograph the familiar subject. More than once I’ve had a feeling that I was “done” with the location, only to go back and find a new way of seeing it to investigate.

I was playing with several ideas when I made this series of photographs. Obviously, I was working with long exposures that allowed the motion of the waves to blur in various ways, smoothing out the surface of the otherwise-rough water and turning shoreline waves into transparent mist. I was also working with a different sort of light than that which I would usually seek out here. More often I look for soft light, produced by some overcast, an early/late hour, or even fog. But it was very clear on this mid-morning visit and the light falling on the rocks was somewhat stark and harsh, especially when I shot almost into the sunlight. It seemed to me that the edginess of the brightly lit rock might be a counterpoint to the softness of the long-exposure blurring of the water. Obviously, I also went with black and white here. Also, a bit unusual for me, I worked with an ultra-wide angle focal length, getting quite close to the foreground but letting the distant subjects be small and accentuating that by placing the horizon very close to the top of the frame.

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

Monterey Cypress Trunks

March 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The trunks of Monterey Cypress trees along the north shore of Point Lobos State Reserve, California

In mid-January I made my first trip back to Point Lobos in quite a few months. This is a place that I know well, having visited since my parents took me when I was a child. I’ve photographed all over the park – though I certainly have not done everything there that can be done, and I’ll continue to photograph the place. On this visit I went without any real preconceived ideas about what I wanted to shoot. Often when I go to such a place I have at least some such ideas – perhaps I’m thinking about wildlife, or maybe I want to photograph in fog, or there might be a forecast of high surf. But this time? I think I just wanted to go there and be in the old familiar landscape of sun and waves and birds and all the rest.

I arrived early, just after the park opened, and when I drove it there were few others there yet. (Point Lobos can become very busy later in the day as tourists from the popular Monterey and Carmel areas show up.) More or less by chance I ended up down at iconic Weston Beach, where I stopped when I saw some arrangements of shoreline boulders that seemed to present some possibilities and because the early morning light was glancing off of sea stacks and islands to the south. I shot here for perhaps a couple of hours and then decided to head back over the Whalers Cove, where I can sometimes photograph interesting birds. When I didn’t see the birds there that I hoped for, I decided to shoulder my gear and take the trail along the dramatic north shore, hoping for some soft light. This little scene caught my attention along the trail, at first because of the interesting back-light, but I soon saw a lot more potential here, especially with the trees tilting at wild angles.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: lobos

Pelicans and Cormorants – Point Lobos

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Cove and Wave

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Surf, Weston Beach

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Monterey Cypress Trunks

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

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