Tag Archives: one

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

Clearing Fog, Point Sur Shoreline

May 11, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Clearlng Fog, Point Sur Shoreline — Sun shines on the shoreline near Point Sur Lighthouse as morning fog thins

Sun shines on the shoreline near Point Sur Lighthouse as morning fog thins

Most of the photographers I know have their “home territory,” the “local neighborhood” where they have photographed for a long time and to which they like to return. For some it may literally be their neighborhood, and they may photograph right around where they live, perhaps even within walking distance. For others it might be a place they no longer live but which they regard as “home” when they go back. My photographic home is rather large, and for almost my entire life it has included California territory from the Pacific coast and redwoods through the Sierra Nevada. Within this larger area, I have to think that the California coast is probably the strongest “home” for me. I’ve gone since my family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when I was four-years-old, and we used to visit state beaches and explore tide pools and coastal trails at Point Lobos.

I still live close enough that I can get up early, drive to the coast, photograph for a few hours, and be home by early afternoon. That’s exactly what I did today. I always check weather forecasts before heading over, and today’s imagined that the coastal fog would break up around 8:00 AM. Wrong. But, no problem, I simply headed a bit farther down the coast, looking for that region of special light on the border between thinning fog and hazy sunlight. I found that boundary and made this photograph of a familiar area where the rocky headlands and beaches lead toward the old Point Sur Lighthouse. There was plenty of filtered sunlight, and still a few cloud shadows when I made the photograph.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Bluff, Tidal Flats, Tomales Bay

October 20, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening along the shoreline of Tomales Bay

This is another photograph from our very recent visit to areas of California just north of San Francisco. If you follow the news, that description perhaps calls to mind the recent (and current, as I write this) major wildfires burning in California, including the disastrous fire in the Santa Rosa area that killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures. In fact, we were very close to that area on this trip. We might not have gone at all, except that one of the reasons for going there was to participate in a wedding — and since the wedding went on despite the first, we went. We had planned a few days after that for photography, and we decided to stick to that plan, too.

The effects of the fires were obvious in many ways: signs in shops and elsewhere about people needing a place to stay or raising funds for fire relief, the traffic heading to the coast to try to find relief from the smoke, and the constant presence of that smoke in the air. We ended up doing much less photography than we usually would, but on one day we did manage to make a few photographs. We had driven north up that coast a ways, turning around just north of Jenner where the smoke became quite severe, and we were returning to the area around Point Reyes National Seashore. We arrived alongside upper Tomales Bay, which separates Point Reyes from the rest of California, not long before sunset. Here the smoke thinned a bit, mostly just producing some atmospheric haze, and the scene was quiet and still in the early evening light.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City

World Trade Center and Oculus

July 17, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

One World Trade Center flanked by building and part of the Oculus structure

Any commentary on a photograph from this location could easily expand to a chapter or more of text, but I’ll attempt to keep it to my usual two paragraphs. If you take the MTA E line spur to the WTC you emerge to more or less this view, one that has changed continuously for the past decade and a half — beginning with the events of September 2001, continuing in the aftermath of clean-up, followed by a long period of monumental construction work, and now beginning to look relatively complete. We did not visit the site for some time after the towers were destroyed, but I recall that our first visit was still a powerful experience — most of all I recall turning a corner and seeing a wall of photographs of FDNY victims.

Today the site, while still carrying the memories of the 2001 incident, begins to feel more and more like it is becoming a finished place and less like it is a perpetual construction zone. The huge Oculus structure now houses the PATH terminal and plenty of businesses. In this photograph its striking, skeletal form intrudes into the frame from the left, and dramatic clouds from another New York summer day are behind the new Trade Center building.

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

Elephant Seals, Stream

January 15, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Elephant seals cavort in a fresh water stream flowing across a beach

During the first week of the new year we travelled to Southern California for a family event. These days we are more likely to take the plane or train for such things, but since our oldest son and his wife were visiting from New York and also were headed that direction we decided to drive and take the Pacific Coast Highway — not fast but certainly scenic. That plan also fell through. We didn’t check road conditions before departing and right around Carmel we saw a sign announcing that the route was closed some miles to the south. Normally that would mean turning around, but since one in our group had never seen the area at all we decided to at least go to Big Sur for lunch before turning around and using highway 101 instead. After lunch I happened to check my phone, and I discovered that the route had been cleared literally minutes earlier — and the Big Sur Coast drive was back on!

Below the most rugged section of the route (roughly south of Ragged Point) the terrain flattens out and becomes much more gentle. In this area there is a well-known elephant seal rookery, where these huge animals haul out and give birth each year. The elephant seal population was once endangered, but protections have brought them back and they are now becoming much more common along California’s coast. These animals had split off from the larger group to enter the fresh water of a coastal stream where it crossed the beach to join the ocean, with the water backlit by the late afternoon sun.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: one

Clearing Fog, Point Sur Shoreline

Bluff, Tidal Flats, Tomales Bay

World Trade Center and Oculus

Elephant Seals, Stream

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