Tag Archives: north

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

Coastline, Dusk

February 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light falls across the rugged Big Sur coastline, California

This was a very special bit of end-of-day light. Earlier we had spent about nine hours driving south between Monterey and Piedras Blancas on the Big Sur coast, stopping frequently along the way to make photographs of the beautiful winter light. At the southern end of our drive we spent time photographing the elephant seals at their “nursery” alongside the road – a popular place for observing this amazing creatures, especially at this time of year when the females are giving birth and the beach is crowded with all sorts of elephant seals: bulls, females, new babies.

Finishing here, it was time to turn the car north again and head back the way we had come. We started up the Pacific Coast Highway and very soon began the first climb into the coastal hills. We kept an eye out for potential gold hour photographic subjects. There are, of course, no shortage of them along this spectacular coastline, so we figured that we would find something no matter where we were during the last hour of light even though we had no specific plan yet. Eventually we came to a place where we had stopped earlier on the southward drive and we pulled off. Earlier, closer to the middle of the day, the light had been very bright here, illuminating coastal haze and reflecting off the ocean surface in a way that reminds me of molten metal. But now the light was lower and coming in at a more direct angle, and the atmosphere softened and the colors warmed in the late-day light. At first the light was more intense and I made a few photographs with the scene brilliantly colored. At one point I looked away to photograph something else, and when I looked back the sun had dropped behind a semi-transparent band of clouds near the horizon, significantly muting the brightness and color of the light on the base of the hills, but still leaving a few intense spots higher up.

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

Rocks, Sand, Wood

February 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful detritus of rocks, sand, and wood along the desert floor of Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is landscape on the gigantic scale and a landscape of extremes. Elevations range from below sea level to over 11,000′ At the right time of year you can stand in 90 degree or hotter temperatures in the lowest place and look up to see snow on the highest peaks. It is well-known that the heat and aridity are extreme. The scale of the place is stupendous. When I first traveled in the park it reminded me, perhaps in a surprising way, of monumental landscapes that I had seen in The Yukon and Alaska, where the land seems to go on farther than one can see. Because there is so little vegetation, the geology of this desert landscape is laid bare, and rugged strata are easy to see.

But there are also surprises right underfoot. At the right time during the right years (and this photo was not made at such a time) small plants and wildflowers emerge and insects and other small critters can be seen. Some of these intimate landscape scenes seem more mundane, but they also tell stories worth hearing. This small patch of earth is at the base of some small, eroded hills along the east side of Death Valley where I have stopped from time to time. It is not an obviously special place – there is no parking lot or sign. The first time I went there to photograph in the evening I looked down and noticed the dense collection of multi-colored rocks, dead plants, and sand, and now when I go back there I seem to always end up looking for the same thing. The curving bit of dried wood was once a plant eking to a life at the edge of the main valley. These rocks are likely evidence of the surprising role that water plays in the formation of this landscape, having been washed down from those various strata and formation high in the Amargosa Range, leaving traces of blue, pink, purple, tan, and green minerals. And below and mixed in with all of this is the omnipresent sand, deposited and moved to and fro by Valley winds.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Dawn Light, Fog, Marsh and Tree

February 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Early morning fog above a marsh briefly glows with pink dawn light, San Joaquin Valley

The winter season ends all too quickly here in California, and blossoms are already appearing on trees. Especially in this drought year, now is the time to enjoy the sights of the cool season – so when we had a chance to make another trip out to the San Joaquin Valley to chase migratory birds a few days ago we immediately changed our previous plans and headed out that way. We left shortly after 4:00 AM so that we could meet friends in the valley at 6:15 – well before dawn, but just in time to be ready for the potentially beautiful pre-dawn light, especially if it would turn out to be foggy.

And it did. Although the two-hour drive was mostly through clear conditions, perhaps 10 minutes from our destination we began to run into the typical Central Valley tule fog. It makes driving difficult… but it makes light wonderful! As soon as we drove into the area where we would photograph we could see that the ground-hugging fog was starting to glow in the pink pre-dawn light. Sometimes we hang out for a bit and chat before getting to work on photographing, but these conditions created a sense of urgency and we immediately moved on to look for subjects. Soon one of the members of our party stopped and headed across a bit of pasture towards the edge of a pond where the quiet water reflected the image of a solitary tree and the colorful sky. I soon joined him, and after he moved on I made a series of photographs of this scene. Photographs made a moment later in the sequence have more of a blue coloration, but for a brief moment the fog glowed pink-purple in the early light.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Dunes, Evening

February 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Receding layers of sand dunes in evening light, Death Valley National Park

After a very long day spent driving a lengthy backcountry gravel road through mountainous terrain, I headed back to my camp at Furnace Creek to take care of camp business and grab something to eat. As I usually do in Death Valley, I scheduled my day around a morning subject and an evening subject. Since the morning work had lasted so long, I was thinking of something closer for the evening and, besides, by the time I was ready to shoot it was probably too late to travel very far in the remaining light before the early sunset of this December day. So I decided to travel up the valley a bit to well-known dunes, where I can almost always find something interesting to photograph if I just go looking.

I stopped some distance from the “usual location,” loaded up some basic equipment, and wandered out into a likely looking section of the terrain that would probably not seem all that special to those seeing the area for the first time. (That’s easy to understand, when the impressive and large sand dunes tower above everything else not far from here!) But I know there is a wealth of interesting things to be found even in what appears to be the plainest of the dunes – conjunctions of light and shadow, textures of sand, tracks of small creatures, plants poking through the sand, and more. When I arrived the low sunlight was just about to leave this area, so I worked quickly, trying to take advantage of fleeting moments of shadow and light. As I came to the top of a low dune I saw this complex terrain of dunes and shadows stretching in front of me.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north

Coastline, Dusk

Rocks, Sand, Wood

Dawn Light, Fog, Marsh and Tree

Dunes, Evening

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