I have always been fascinated by light shining directly through the atmosphere, coming straight on towards me – the brighter and more luminous the glow the better. You frequently find me aiming my camera almost straight toward the sun. (I’ve become a master at shading lenses with hands, hat, pieces of paper, you name it.) I also love atmospheric recession, the illumination of distance by the haze, as more distant subjects lose contrast and detail. This scene had all of those things, and perhaps even more.

I had been driving the coast highway (highway 1) between Santa Cruz and San Francisco on this winter day, and in places it was very foggy – but here it was the kind of fog that, while dense near the ground, is shallow enough that the light from the sun shines though and can even make looking at the clouds almost unbearable. I pulled over at a place where it looked like I might be able to walk out onto a shoreline bluff high above the water and see over the edge to the water and cliffs below and beyond. A saw this line-up of receding cliffs dropping to the surf and decided to shoot along them towards the sun. (I was surprised to find later that hidden in the fog is a small creek dropping from one section of the cliff in a small water fall.)

This high key image is a bit different from what I usually do. The fog was backlit by some fairly bright sunlight and, although it is nearly impossible to see in this little jpg image, there is a lot of detail in the frothy white surface of the water on the right side.

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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.
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