Tag Archives: north

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

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur

August 14, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Having a couple of free hours late in the day, we ended up driving down the upper section of the Big Sur coastline below Monterey, to the area around the Rocky Creek and Bixby Bridges. (Though we stopped a bit short of the latter.) The light was alternately gray and murky, soft and misty, and sharp and bright – the fog was lurking near the coast, and depending upon which bend we drove around it covered the coast highway and the inland hills or it ended just off the coast.

This kind of coastal light creates some of the most transitory and ephemeral effects of all the subjects I shoot, similar perhaps to shooting the clouds of a dissipating winter storm among the aretes and spires of Sierra peaks. The variables in play are numerous: the point of the fog line off the shore or inland, whether or not the fog is thin enough to allow a bit of light so shine directly through, the appearing and disappearing pools of offshore light where the clouds thin, and the motion of the sea itself. Often I’ll spot what looks like absolutely gorgeous light, stop, grab gear and set up… and then look up to see that it is gone. Or that it is appearing in some other location where there was nothing a moment ago.

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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon

August 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Evening fog obscures the landscape of Rodeo Lagoon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

There is a somewhat unlikely story behind this photograph, but a pleasant one. Earlier on this day I had been in downtown San Francisco, in the heart of one of the more urbanized (and not in the good sense of the word) areas of the town. The reason for my visit was a pleasant one, and I do like San Francisco a great deal, but it was a very urbanized experience. I planned that after my downtown event concluded I would go do some evening and perhaps night photography elsewhere within an hour or so radius of The City, since I needed to be back there at about 11:00 p.m. It was mostly sunny in San Francisco, though there were a few wispy fog clouds present, so I started driving more or less west to see what might turn up.

As happened the last time I tried this pattern earlier this summer, as I drove I ended up in more fog rather than less. I recalculated and, again, thought that I’d try to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and see if I could get above the incoming fog by climbing into the Marin Headlands. The fog on the bridge was very thick and it was quite windy. At the north end of the bridge I headed up the hill – there was tantalizing, glowing light somewhere out there in the fog that suggested some clearing to my west and south, but the road itself was completely socked in. Optimistically (or foolishly!) I continued on to the area near Point Bonita, but I could not get out of the fog. It was now getting very close to actual sunset – though I could only detect this by a general darkening of the murky gloom – and I figured I might as well drive down towards Rodeo Beach to see what was there. As I crossed the upper end of Rodeo Lagoon I looked to my left and saw this small group of birds congregating not far from the shore, and in the fading light I decided that it was going to be this shot or no shot at all. I pulled over, took out the camera with the prime lens that I had used earlier for street shooting still in place, attached camera to tripod, and walked over close to the edge of the water.

After all of this driving, I was suddenly conscious of the quiet of this place in the evening light. The thick fog was blowing rapidly up the lagoon from the beach and glowing in the backlight as the light was fading, and three fog horns producing the tones of a minor triad (!) were slowly and mournfully sounding as I made several exposures of this scene. I finished, the light became very dark, and I drove a bit further so that I could walk across the beach to stand at the edge of the surf in the wind and fog before leaving.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man in the Window

August 12, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the windows of a financial district building, San Francisco, California.

I’m fascinated by the reflections in and among the windows of urban buildings, especially those whose surfaces are primarily glass. It often seems when I look at them that the building barely has a real surface at all, and instead most of what I see when I look is the often distorted reflections of other surrounding buildings and signs and perhaps some sky or clouds. So when I walk in San Francisco with my camera I’m often looking up, not so much to simply photograph the buildings but also to watch for these transitory conjunctions of reflections

I made this photograph while walking a narrow street in San Francisco’s financial district late in the day as fog was softening the early evening light. I was momentarily almost shocked to see the face of this man who, divorced from the full context of the sign on which he appeared, looking like huge and intense figure in the windows of this building. And aside from the two horizontal ledges and the thin structures between the window panes, everything else in the image is also a reflection of the surfaces of buildings around and behind me.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Purple and Yellow Lilies

August 11, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Purple and yellow lilies in the Commemorative Garden at the Gene and Irene Wockner Hospice Center.

Yes, more lilies… These were also photographed in the Commemorative Garden at the Wockner Hospice in Kirkland, Washington. While I probably spent more time on some nearby daylilies that were bright red and yellow, these darker purple variants were nearby in the same shaded area of the garden.

For those who like equipment talk, a bit of information. (I’m not immune, but this subject can become a distraction from photography) I made this series of photographs using a 135mm f/2 prime lens. This lens lets me place the sharper portions of the flowers against a soft, blurry background, and even lets me blur portions of the main subject – the slightly long focal length and the large aperture make for very narrow depth of field.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur

Birds, Evening Fog, Rodeo Lagoon

Man in the Window

Purple and Yellow Lilies

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