Our time on the Isle of Skye this past May combined visits to iconic locations. (I’m not against photographing icons that are new to me, or when conditions are extra special.) On this day we did a bit of both. Before we ended up here we had taken a long drive out to the tiny hamlet of Elgol. We returned, stopped for a quick dinner and then (the sun sets very late there in May) decided that Neist Point might be a reasonable objective.
Continue reading Neist Point Lighthouse
Evening Overlook. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.
Two people watching the early evening view of immense desert mountains from a high overlook.
Late in the day during my recent Death Valley visit I went to this overlook. It is more typically a place to photograph the sunrise, which comes from camera-left and illuminates the big ridges in the distance. But I had a free evening, not a morning, so I figured it was worth a shot. I arrived before sunset, and I made this photograph before the sun had dropped behind the western ridge, though the haze and high clouds softened the light a bit.
I’ve never been able to quite describe in words the experience of standing on a very high point in such a vast landscape. From here one can look 5000′ down into Death Valley or look 6000′ up toward the highest peak in the Panamint Range and simultaneously feel “on top of the world” and very, very small in the presence of such immensity.
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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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Coastal Pinnacles, Fog. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Rocky pinnacles rise above the rugged Big Sur coastline.
On some days photography is easy. It seems that subjects are everywhere, and all of them are obvious, compelling, and beautiful. But most days aren’t like that. This week’s day trip to the Big Sur coast was great but it had its challenges. Ironically, the major challenge came from the trigger for this visit: fog. California summers can be “too beautiful,” if your idea of beauty is perfect warm blue sky days. (Though such days are increasingly affected by wildfire smoke, but I digress…) I prefer more interesting conditions, and coastal fog fills the bill. But it presents some challenges, often related to fickle local conditions. The ideal is to have just the right amount of fog, which means enough to be interesting but not so much as to kill all directional light. (A tourist stopped while I was making this photograph and, obviously distressed by the near invisibly of the nearby ocean, asked “is it always like this?)
On the plus side, there is virtually always something to see no matter where you stop along the Big Sur coast, and I “discover” some new features on every visit. For no particular reason I stopped above a small bay filled with fog, and when I walked to the edge I spotted this dramatic feature below near the edge of the surf — a peninsula with pinnacles running out toward a small island nearly obscured by the fog. I set up and made a few exposures, then settled in to way for a bit more clearing. The for was right up against the coast, and there was occasional sunlight only feet behind me, so I figured that the fog would continue to dissipate. I was wrong. Even though it was midday, when the sun usually wins out over the fog, the view became more obscure and this photograph, on of the first I made, turned out to be the keeper.
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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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Tree and Pinnacle, Pacific Sunset. Marin Headlands, California. August 29, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
The last evening light falls on a tree and a rocky pinnacle high above the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco, California.
On the return drive from our late-August sojourn to the Mendocino Coast, we returned to the Bay Area by the less efficient but more spectacular route and drove the coast on Highway 1, the “coast highway.” For the most part the road hugs the coastline, alternately dipping down to the shoreline and climbing to the tops of very tall coastal bluffs, and occasionally running inland for a short distance. We stopped in Point Reyes Station for dinner (and we can now heartily recommend Osteria Stellina!) and then continued on – and as we did I began to get a sense of where we might be for the golden hour light. It seemed like we would likely pass Stinson Beach – which seemed fine, since I didn’t have an interest in photographing there – and be somewhere south of there in the Marin Headlands.
As we ascended the high and steep road perched along the cliffs south of Stinson Beach, a lot of stuff started happening all at once. I knew that we were getting very close to “that” light, when we spotted a lone coyote along a ridge above the road… right below a large ridgeline rock and above which the nearly full moon had just appeared. Really! So we obviously had to stop and see what we could do with that subject – which turned out to be more difficult that I had thought. At about this time other likely “targets” started to appear, and I photographed back towards Stinson Beach, directly into the sun-lit haze from northern California forest fires. Then I looked closer to my location and saw this windswept tree catching the last bit of light, with a single rugged pinnacle behind it, and beyond that the surface of the Pacific Ocean, fading into the mist and picking up the pink tones of the setting sun.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.