Tag Archives: point

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

Beach, Fog, and Surf

June 30, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pacific ocean surf at a foggy beach near Point Sur

My part of California — generally the San Francisco Bay Area — is climatically complex, especially during the warm season. We sit between the hot interior climate of the Central Valley and points further east, and the coastal climate under the influence of the Pacific Ocean. The Bay Area is famous for its microclimate, and conditions can diverge wildly among areas that are not that far apart. A day or two ago the weather report told of temperatures well above 100 degrees along the eastern edge of the region where it spills out into the Central Valley and temperatures that never reached 60 degrees along the coast at Point Reyes — a difference of close to 50 degrees between areas separated by a few tens of miles.

The past week has been one of the periodic hot spells, so when I heard about the mid-fifty degree temperatures and fog along the coast I had to go! Today I drove down past Monterey and kept going down the Big Sur coast past Lucia. It was foggy well inland in the morning and it never did clear completely along the coast, where not only was it cold but the winds were howling and kicking up whitecaps on the ocean. I made this photograph near Point Sur, roughly along the line where the inland sun and the coastal fog were doing battle… and the fog was still winning at this point.

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Morning, Mountains, Desert Canyons

June 21, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cloud-filled sky at first light above desert mountains and canyon, Death Valley National Park

As I post this photograph on the summer solstice, this location is perhaps not a place you would want to be right now. I understand that temperatures in Death Valley National Park have been in the 120 degree range already this summer. But back on this March morning the scene was a lot different — clouds from a passing Pacific weather front obscured the dawn light, and there was a pleasantly cool wind at this location high in the Panamint range as the morning light arrived.

This view looks down through one of the many gigantic canyons of the Panamint Range, a sight that reminds us of just how important the flow of water has been in the creation of this remarkable landscape. In the middle distance the salt flats of Death Valley are visible at the base of the Black Mountains, and above that the demarcations between mountains and clouds and sky and light are hard to see, and the terrain of the rugged Death Valley landscape almost merges with the ephemeral terrain of this sky.

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Desert Wash and Mountains

April 15, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A golden desert wash descends toward distant mountains and a valley.

This beautiful wash is very (very!) close to one of the iconic Death Valley stopping places. I’ve never been able to warm up to that particular spot as a photographic subject. Fortunately, even time I go there I look in a slightly different direction — and I often seem to be the only person looking that way — and find this lovely view.

We visited near the end of the day, as afternoon sunlight begins to take on the warm tones of early evening and shadows start to stretch across the valley. Once again, I stopped at this well-known place. Once again I thought it was interesting, but not quite what I wanted to photograph. And, once again, I looked downhill and away to see this wash. The light highlighted the different colors of the geological deposits here, with yellow material lining the path of the wash and the middle distance hills darker and holding tones that are more reddish. The path of the wash winds sinuously back and forth as it descends between the lowering walls, with shadow on one side and sun on the other.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Basin and Range

April 12, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A long distance view across Death Valley and to distant mountains beyond

The landscape of Death Valley National Park is immense. The fact that it is the largest national park in the lower 48 states begins to penetrate my awareness the more time I spend there. A number of years ago I spent some time on a very long cycling trip in Alaska and the Yukon, and this desert landscape comes closer than any other I have experienced to evoking the same sense of huge distances and deep stillness and quiet. This landscape extends even further beyond the boundaries of the park, from the Sierra Nevada to the west to distant peaks of the basin and range country to the east.

This high elevation location opens to such a huge swath of terrain that it is difficult to get your mind around the scale of what you are seeing. For example, there is a road out there in the large valley. To get there from the place where my tripod was set up would take me hours of driving — and that would take me perhaps less than half way toward the most distant peaks. Enhancing the other-worldly quality of this morning was the unusual atmosphere. The clouds of a weather front were breaking up over the mountains and valleys, and their shadows were moving across the landscape. Meanwhile, in another valley far behind me, dust storm conditions (which would envelope this entire scene by the end of the day) were beginning to pick up, and already the atmosphere was getting that milky, hazy quality that precedes such weather. At the bottom of the scene is an immense gravel fan that has carried material down from these mountains, filling the valley in places to thousands of feet of depth.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: point

Beach, Fog, and Surf

Morning, Mountains, Desert Canyons

Desert Wash and Mountains

Basin and Range

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