Tag Archives: morning

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

Morning Fog, Tomales Bay

May 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on fog shrouded green hills along the shores of Tomales Bay, California

I made this photograph just after dawn on a beautiful February morning along the shore of Tomales Bay near Inverness, California, while on my way to the Point Reyes National Seashore. That I was here in this spot was the result of slightly poor planning. I had awakened three hours before dawn so that I could drive up here and, or so I hoped, be out at Point Reyes near the lighthouse at dawn and photograph the outer edges of Drakes Bay in the very early morning light. I miscalculated the driving time and didn’t get out the door quite as quickly as I planned, and by the time I was approaching Tomales Bay I knew that the sun was going to be up well before I got to my original goal.

As I drove through the redwood forest approaching the coast it was very foggy, a bit to my surprise since the forecast had not mentioned this. At first I thought that the fog might extend the early morning shooting a bit, but as I arrived near Olema and then headed out on the road along Tomales Bay, it was clear (literally!) that the fog was lifting and that if I was going to shoot the early light it had to be right then and there. I pulled over at a spot where some interesting buildings stand in the shallow waters along the shoreline, unloaded my gear and walked a bit to make some shots here. I was surprised by the cold. Here by the water, where the nighttime temperature are typically moderated quite a bit, it was about 30 degrees! The first light was beginning to angle across the low, green hills on the other side of the bay as the wispy fog began to disperse, so I made a simple photograph of the water of the bay, with water plants in the foreground, the color gradient fading from dark blue to near white, and the hills beyond.

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

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.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Mountains, Pre-Dawn Haze

April 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Desert mountain ridges in pre-dawn “blue hour” light rise above Death Valley and recede to highest peaks in the distance

On this April 2013 visit to Death Valley I encountered some very challenging light situations. What you hope for on an early morning like this is beautiful, colorful dawn light, perhaps preceded by a warm pre-dawn glow and followed by bright morning light. But when it came to beautiful early morning light – and evening light, too – I got precious little of it this time. On two mornings a thin overcast and atmospheric haze pretty much killed the dawn light. On one other morning I got some light, but still had to deal with the haze. The clouds were with me on a couple of the evenings, too. I have sort of learned to pretty much go with this flow and accept that difficult light as the balance in the universe that gave me, and will give me again, astonishingly beautiful light.

However, even in such light I try to see what I can find to shoot, and sometimes it provokes me to see things that I might otherwise have overlooked completely. On this morning I was up well before dawn and I headed off to a specific location that I had scouted earlier. I had two possible sorts of photographs in mind for this spot. One involved the view back down and across the main valley, and the other was planned around the arrival of first light on these rugged and stratified hills along the west side of the valley. I got to my spot, was relieved to find that the air was fairly still, and I settled in to wait for the dawn… which never quite came. It was so murky and the light was blocked by so many clouds to the east that I wasn’t even really quite certain when dawn occurred. Things got lighter… but remained hazy. I made this photograph at a moment when, on a clearer morning, these hills might have begun to assume a warm colored glow from light in the eastern sky. But this time it was all blue. The hazy sky was blue, and the mountains were as well. Since the conditions were somewhat unusual, I went ahead and made some exposures. When I first looked at the results I wasn’t very thrilled. But as I looked at them more, especially at very large sizes, I began to appreciate the softer and lower-contrast lighting and the way that details in the formations of the mountains actually become quite visible.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: morning

Morning Fog, Tomales Bay

Coastal Valley, Morning Light

Desert Mountains, Pre-Dawn Haze

Calero Oaks, Fog

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