Tag Archives: morning

Morning Musings (8/17/14)

August 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

If you don’t already follow The Online Photographer (or “TOP”), wander on over there and take a look. The slightly idiosyncratic blog often offers articles and commentary that provide interesting insights and which might make you look at things a bit differently. I read it regularly.

I’m mentioning TOP this morning because of something I saw there recently, a “something” that is directly related to this post, namely the TOP posts shared as “The Morning Coffee.” These are typically relatively short posts on a variety of subjects and at least giving the feeling of being somewhat informal posts written over a cup of coffee. Hey, I’m usually up early. I drink coffee. I like to write. Hence my own new “Morning Musings” series. We’ll see where it leads.

My “musing” for today relates to something from my recent trip to New York City. The brief story — likely to be expanded upon soon in other posts — is that I got to spend about a week wandering around Manhattan and Brooklyn with a camera. I had been thinking about doing some handheld night street photography for some time, and I had the opportunity on this trip. On one particular night, after emerging from a musical performance at a club, we headed off toward another performance in a nearby park. As we walked, hours after sunset, I pulled out my smaller “street” camera with a f/1.4 lens, raised ISO to 1600 or 3200 and started shooting. The ability to do this — shoot handheld in the middle of the night — was incredibly liberating. I’ve done a lot of tripod-based traditional night photography, but the technology of these newer cameras lets us shoot the night in an entirely different way, capturing quickly appearing subjects and conditions in ways that were essentially impossible only a few years ago. (Photos upcoming in the next week or two.)

Musing written. Coffee consumed. Now off to make some photographs…

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

Rugged Coastline, Fog

August 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning fog clears from mountains above Soberanes Canyon along the rugged Big Sur coastline

This may be a familiar scene to people who are familiar with the upper section of California’s Big Sur coast below Monterey, where steep coastal mountains drop to the shoreline and where the climate oscillates on the boundary between sun and fog. This time I visited on a day when it was hot inland on the other side of the coastal mountains — it was perhaps 30 degrees color on the ocean side.

The scene is in a very specific area close to Soberanes Canyon, but it exemplifies scenes that can be found all along this spectacular coastline. Soberanes Canyon is a popular stopping place, with access to the ocean and to trails up into the steep canyon which extends to the left below the fog-shrouded summit near the top of this photograph. This section of the shoreline is not as high as some other sections in the area, but it is extremely rugged, with a steep, rocky bluff and scores of rocky sea stacks.

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

Rocky Beach, Cove, and Fog

July 25, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A rocky beach and cove on a foggy summer morning along the Big Sur coast

On July 4 (of all days!) I headed out rather early so that I could make it to the upper Big Sur coastline before the tourist traffic arrived. I succeeded, and there were very few people when I arrived on the foggy coast and drove slowly south while looking for photographs. It being a major holiday, within a few hours the Pacific Coast Highway was filled with visitors, and I turned around and headed back home.

I like several things about this photograph, and most of them have to do with the fact that, in many ways, there is little all that special about the scene. I’m not sure that I could even find this particular cove again, at least not without some careful searching — this coastline is almost a continuum of such places, and almost anywhere you stop and look around a bit you can find such scenes. The fog is another typical element, especially in the summer months, when many visitors are surprised to find that the beautiful sunny scenes that they have seen in photographs are the exception rather than the rule. A typical summer morning in this region? Fog! To many of us Californians, however, this is part of the appeal. On a day when only a few miles inland the temperatures were well into the ninety degree range and perhaps higher, along this coastline I could enjoy the welcome and cool and damp of the coastal fog.

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

Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Bridge

July 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A trip to the Big Sur coast last week got me thinking again about the photographic possibilities of that area, and about the fact that I need to photograph there more often! I’ve visited this coast since I was a child, and perhaps because it is so familiar to me I tend to overlook it, even though it is close enough that I can be there and back in less than a day.

In addition to my more recent visit, I was there much earlier this year, back in winter when we visited in late January. So, thinking about Big Sur this week, it seemed like a good time to start going back through those older photographs to see what emerged. (While I often share some photographs immediately after shooting a subject, I also like to revisit the images months or even a year or more later, when I think I can see them more clearly for what they are sometimes.) As I looked at these older photographs they seemed to me to have potential as monochrome images, and I ended up interpreting several of them that way. This photograph was made in the morning, and from a fairly iconic overlook in the upper section of the Big Sur coast, where ridge after ridge descends to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

COMMENT OR QUESTION? Scroll down to the comment form.

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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: morning

Morning Musings (8/17/14)

Rugged Coastline, Fog

Rocky Beach, Cove, and Fog

Big Sur Coast Near Bixby Bridge

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