Tag Archives: one

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

Pacific Ocean, Clearing Storm

March 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sun breaks through clouds as a storm clears above the Pacific Ocean along the California coast.

On this mid-February day, we did a long looping drive down from the San Francisco Bay Area to the lower end of Big Sur coast and back up along the Coast Highway. It seems that for a good part of the past month or two, my photographic trips have been excellent predictors of awful weather, usually of the gray, flat, and cloudy type. (Fortunately, I’ve seen enough great days that I feel like this is a matter of balance in the universe, and I know that I’ll get my good light days again soon enough.) Although I proclaimed that by going south we would escape the northern California fog that was around that day, by the time we got out to the coast near Piedras Blancas… it was raining! And rain wasn’t even in the weather forecast.

When I encounter such weather or other impediments to photography, I have a series of ways to cope with the situation. I tell myself that I’m “scouting” locations that I’ll come back to in better conditions – and, frankly, this often turns out to be true. Sometimes I might just decide not to focus on photography so much and perhaps try other things. But most often I keep looking, and sometimes I start seeing small things that sort of sneak up on me and are then gone. Looking at this photograph you might imagine a day of glorious light passing through broken clouds to light the ocean. In reality, it was moments of such light, with many moments of gray in between. But when this light does shine though a cloud deck that is thinning and produces reflecting patterns stretching to the horizon, such a moment may make a long day’s drive worth it.

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

Davenport Bluffs, Sunset

January 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The last light shines on coastal bluffs and Davenport, California

On this early December day I had gone off to try to join a G+ “photowalk” that was purportedly taking place that day. I was looking forward to going to a few favorite local photography locations and to meeting some people who I’ve only known online. But it was not to be! I ended up being delayed at home and couldn’t leave in time to meet the group at their first location, Henry Cowell Park. I went with Plan B and figured I would try to join up with them at lunch in Davenport. I got there and didn’t see anyone, so I figured that I was early and I drove up the coast a bit. I came back to Davenport and thought they might be in one of the two restaurants, so I picked one and went in for lunch… by myself. (I found out later that, yes, they were in the other restaurant a hundred yards south.) After lunch I went across the road to the parking area when I thought folks might meet up, but still no luck – though I did see a few photographers out on the nearby bluff. I headed out there and finally ran into a couple of people from the group… which had gone down to a nearby beach area to shoot.

Finding interesting stuff up here on the bluff, I decide to work the location I found myself in rather than heading off and looking for something else. While the location was interesting, the light was initially unpromising. However, I thought there was a chance that things might improve later so I walked around and began doing some shooting. At one point, I talked to some other photographers about the somewhat bland lighting conditions and pointed out that it seemed to me that there was at least a chance that we might get a bit of interesting light as the sun dropped to the horizon, when the light can sometimes shine in below the clouds and produce some brief but beautiful conditions. This prediction turned out to be right, and I made this photograph just as the show was beginning, and warm-tone light was starting to hit the bluffs, beaches, and water.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

One Green Leaf

January 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

My two October trips to photograph in Utah extended my ongoing education about the place, and one of the locations about which I had and still have the most to learn is Capitol Reef National Park. My encounter with this park, in 2012, was a bit superficial, though my excuse is that we were only passing through on our way to another place. All I saw was the short highway drive that passed through the park via the Fruita District — the rest of the park remained a complete mystery. In October I was there twice. On the first visit I was in the area enough to start to get a bit of a feel for the place, though I mostly still stuck to popular and accessible areas, with the addition of a bit of hiking and a long drive on gravel roads down the less-visited side of the park. On the second visit I learned and saw a bit more – enough to convince me that there is much more to this park and that I want to return.

I made this photograph in a short slot canyon in an out-of-the way area of the park. We drove there on a very cold morning and headed into the canyon while the temperature still hovered around freezing. There was no one else there, and we barely even saw anyone else on the long drive to get there. The little canyon itself was quite beautiful and full of interesting surprises – juxtapositions of glowing red-orange walls and shaded blue-purple walls, brilliantly colorful gambel oak leaves, large sandstone faces and walls, and more. As I investigate a place like this I try to let my eyes roam beyond the first things I see, and try to also see smaller things that could easily be missed. Here I happened to look down at my feet – sometimes a good thing to do! – and see that the floor of the stream bed carpeted with oak and other leaves that had recently fallen, and this batch of brown and tan leaves held one that was still green.

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.

Photographs: Events, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Northern California

Dawn, Waiting for Endeavour

October 20, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early crowds at dawn, lining up to view the space shuttle Endeavour fly over the NASA/Ames Moffett Field facility

I’ve posted enough photographs of the space shuttle Endeavour on its flyover of the NASA Ames Moffett Field – here is a photograph of some of the people who showed up to see the event. The place opened its gates at 6:00 a.m., which is well before sunrise in California at this time of year. I left home at about that time and took public transit, arriving just about the time of sunrise. I joined the growing throng arriving at Moffett. Quite a few came by car, but many also came on foot, walking from the nearby light rail stations or from their cars that they had parked in nearby Mountain View.

Once on the base the decisions were pretty straightforward – to stop of breakfast, coffee and souvenirs or to head straight out to the edge of the runway to take up a position hours in advance of the flyover. I made a quick stop for coffee, but decided to forego souvenirs and the available food-truck breakfasts (as good as they looked), and headed straight out onto the runway. There was a crowd already near the entrance area, but much of the runway was still open, especially further down toward the old Hangar One, where I found a position right along the barricades next to the runway. For the next few hours, people mostly hung out – talking, making photographs, checking cell phones, and so on – as the sun rose and the anticipate built. The photograph shows a small portion of the crowd right near sunrise, when the shadows were still long and most people had not yet arrived. The skeleton of the historic Hangar One is at the far left.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: one

Pacific Ocean, Clearing Storm

Davenport Bluffs, Sunset

One Green Leaf

Dawn, Waiting for Endeavour

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