Tag Archives: morning

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

Dawn Light, Panamint Range and Salt Flats

February 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

The first dawn light on the snow-dusted Panamint Range is reflected in shallow winter pools on the salt flats of Death Valley National Park.

This is yet another story of serendipity, I think, though it also does involve some advance work – which should please those who become uncomfortable with the idea that not every landscape photograph results from a slow and deliberate and well-planned process! ;-)

The general location of this scene is along a section of salt flat just below the Salt Creek turnoff from the main highway – it is the first area of obvious salt flats that you come to as you head south towards the Furnace Creek area. One one of my first photographic visits to Death Valley I recall stopping near this location along the road and trying to make a photograph pointing down the length of the Valley. It was not successful, but I’ve always been a bit intrigued by this location where the road has to curve around to the east to avoid this salt flat. A day or two earlier on this trip I had stopped along the road at almost this exact location during the “boring light” part of the day after shooting somewhere else. I had wandered – without any camera gear – down across the wash to a patch of brown salt grass and beyond to the edge of the salt flat. I had noticed a lot of things: the very alien nature of this landscape consisting of mud and caked salt and not much else, the surprising presence of some worms and larvae in this tremendously salty water, the fact that the water seemed to seep from beneath the wash, and the interesting shapes that the water created as it slowly spread along the edge of the salt flat.

Move ahead to this morning, the final one of this trip to Death Valley, and I was up well before first light. I had several ideas about what I might photograph, but had not made a firm decision yet since the weather was something of an unknown. I had a vague idea about heading north up the valley and photographing the first light on the hills along its western edge. I was keeping open the possibility that spectacular light might make it worth while to photograph Zabriskie. But I really didn’t know.

I drove to the Furnace Creek/Scotty’s Castle junction and pulled over to watch the light begin to grow. There were lots of clouds! It looked like a lighter area might evolve straight to my east, but I couldn’t quite see photographic potential in it. To the north things looked pretty bleak. There was some possibility that light could happen way to the south, but I wasn’t convinced. I decided to drive a bit south and see what might happen, and very soon I came back to this place where I had stopped earlier. The light wasn’t very promising – clouds to the east seemed likely to block the sunrise light even though there were some interesting cloud patterns overhead that were starting to become more transparent as the sky began to lighten.

Then I caught just a bit of light on some of the higher clouds above the middle level clouds and I started to wonder if the light just might make it through. I went to the back of the car and grabbed my camera with one lens already attached and mounted it on the tripod. I wasn’t sure if I’d want wide or tele for some of the possible subjects, so I grabbed two additional lenses and stuck them in a shoulder bag and headed down the wash, not really looking up too much, just heading straight towards these little areas of water that I remembered from earlier. As I got close to the edge of the flats I saw that, indeed, a band of sunrise light was coming in below the cloud deck to the east (something I have learned to watch for) and starting to light up the highest peaks of the Panamints. I knew that if this light survived long enough to make it down across the range that it was going to happen fast, so I quickly headed out onto the edge of the flats, more or less ignoring the larger scene and simply looking for an interesting reflecting pool. As I set up – working very quickly now – the first sun lit up the face of the panamints and revealed radiating cloud shapes above. I had perhaps two minutes of this light… and then the small gap along the eastern horizon must have closed up as the light disappeared and went back to gray.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Richardson Bay, Morning

February 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This photograph was shot from essentially the same position as the previous one, a black and white photo of the same vista, though with shorter focal length. I used a longer focal length here to try to enlarge to closer elements and leave out some of the stuff along the edges, and to minimize the amount of sky to some extent. I liked the color version of this – it was hard for me to think about giving up the nice overall blue haze, but even more to give up the was of light on some of the green grassy areas at the bottom of the frame.

There is quite a bit of stuff in this image, so let me describe what you see. At the bottom of the frame are hills above Marin City. Beyond the foreground hills you see Richardson Bay, which is an arm of San Francisco Bay near the entrance to Golden Gate. Across the bay we see the hills of the Tiburon Peninsula and beyond that looms the peak of Angel Island. In the distance and across San Francisco the buildings of downtown Oakland are visible through the low level backlit morning haze. Beyond are the East Bay Hills and the furthest peak is Mount Diablo, all the way out past Concord.

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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

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, Morning

February 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, with San Francisco Bay, the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, a departing ship, and the East Bay hills beyond in morning fog and haze.

I’ve been working on the color version of this photograph, which proved to be a bit more tricky than I would have expected. My recollection of the light on this morning was that it was very bright – with the backlit haze/fog – and quite blue. But, as often happens, the coloration in the camera was dissonant with my memory, and I had to think a bit about where I wanted to go with the photography in post. In particular, the sky had an odd pink cast that can often become more obvious when using a long lens and only keeping a bit of the sky right above the horizon.

The background on this photograph (and several others in the same series) is that it was made on an early February morning shortly after sunrise from a point high in the Marin Headlands of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. For the most part it was actually a brilliantly sunny and clear morning, but an inversion layer was creating a thin blanket of fog/haze that was almost too bright to look at and which muted the details of the landscape. (It was also tremendously windy – making it a challenge to shoot with a long lens!) After making a few initial exposures from a more obvious location – and one that was slightly out of the wind – I decided to wander a bit and look for juxtapositions of various landscape elements with the shape of the north tower of the bridge. After a short walk I found this spot where the tower was centered between the two towers of the more distant western span of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, and where the view included a bit of the San Francisco waterfront along the right margin and the fog-covered flatlands below the East Bay hills.

As I worked I noticed a freighter leaving the Port of Oakland beyond the further bridge. I’ve watched enough of these ships heading across the bay that I have a pretty good idea of the path they follow, and I knew that this one would cross beneath the Bay Bridge and then turn to cross the frame towards the left – so I waited for it to reach the position just barely to the left of the closer bridge tower before making this exposure.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge

February 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Black and white photograph of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge silhouetted against San Francisco Bay morning haze and the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge.

A week ago I posted a few other photographs from this early morning winter visit to the upper reaches of the Marin Headlands, from which I photographed the bridges of the San Francisco Bay, backlit by early sun and partially obscured by a low layer of fog and haze. Since I am not fond of adding poetic (or pseudo-poetic) titles to my photographs, preferring to let them say whatever they have to say on their own, I have resisted the temptation to call this one “The Three Towers.” ;-)

The dark shape in the foreground that dominates the frame is, of course, the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. Shooting it in this light is trickier than it might seem like it should be. The light coming from beyond, reflected and amplified by water and haze, is very bright – almost hard to look at directly. So the west side of the bridge is deeply shadowed. I like the dark and stark shape of the tower here – as opposed to the more familiar photographs front or side lit by late afternoon or evening light – but the trick is to keep just a bit of detail in that nearly black tower.

The scene posed another technical issue, though it probably isn’t visible in this small version. As the sun comes up and heats the atmosphere, and as wind blows (and it was windy on this morning!) there is a lot of atmospheric turbulence. Normally you wouldn’t notice this at all, but when you shoot with a long lens and enlarge the image you quickly see that sharp edges and fine lines take on an almost “painterly” quality as the atmosphere shimmers, much in the manner of a mirage.

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