Tag Archives: point

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

Monterey Cypress Forest, Point Lobos

January 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Winter light on the Monterey Cypress forest growing on a hillside at Point Lobos State Reserve.

This is perhaps an absurdly complex photograph – I think it is going to have to end up as a large print at some point. This is a section of Monterey Cypress forest that I’ve walked through many times on the trail along the north shore at Point Lobos State Reserve near Carmel, California. These trees grow along the tops of rocky bluffs above the ocean and in some sheltered places can grow tall and straight.

I made this photograph in what almost amounted to midday sun, though there were a few fog clouds floating around to mute the harshest character of the light a bit. But I knew that the photograph was going to be tricky. The first challenge was finding a location from which to shoot it – most angles are blocked by closer trees or are inaccessible. I finally found a spot along the trail where I could shoot between trees using a longer focal length. Then there was the problem of the light, or more accurately the dynamic range between the clouds and a bit of blue sky and the much darker backlit and shadowed trees in the foreground. Finally, it is just a very complex scene, and making any kind of coherent composition out of it was tricky. I don’t know yet whether it succeeds or not, but the idea was to use the angled division between the darker and very complex lower right side and the lighter upper left side with its vertical tree trunks, and to let the darker foreground tree connect it all together. That was the idea, anyway!

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM at 94mm (at B&H)
ISO 100, f/16, 1/40 second

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

Winter Dusk, Carmel Highlands Near Yankee Point

December 17, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Winter dusk light and clouds over the Pacific Ocean at Carmel Highlands near Yankee Point, Pacific Coast Highway, California.

This is the companion image to the black and white photograph I posted yesterday, Before I made the exposures that I used to create that black and white landscape-orientation image, I first made a quick series of bracketed exposures in portrait mode. As I photographed, I knew that the dynamic range was going to be too large for a singe exposure so I quickly made a series of four exposures, from which I selected two that have blended to produce this image.

This photograph is 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: Ocean & Coast

Yankee Point and Cypress, Carmel Highlands, Dusk

December 16, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

A Carmel Highlands cypress trees stands at the edge of a cliff above the Pacific Ocean and Yankee Point at dusk.

Oddly, this is a photograph that sort of “didn’t make the cut” the first time I went through the batch shortly after making the photographs in early 2010. I had spent the afternoon photographing further south in the Big Sur area and several other photographs from the set turned out more as I expected – and this one seemed like a sort of problem child photograph, so I didn’t take the time needed to work with it. Eventually I forgot about it as I went on to other projects.

The photo had been almost a bit of a grab shot. As I was heading north back up the coast, thinking I had finished my shooting and was now on the way home, I was stunned to catch a glimpse of some intense post-sunset light as I rounded the bend at the head of this cove in Carmel Highlands. I wasn’t certain that I could find a composition and work out a photograph in the brief interval the probably remained before the light faded, but I quickly put on the wide angle zoom, attached the camera to the tripod, and headed over to the edge of the bluff. Exposure was a terrible problem because the brilliant and very colorful sky was quite bright, while the close side of the foreground tree was nearly black. I made managed to shoot the scene a few times, shifting from landscape to portrait mode and making three bracketed exposures of each composition.

When I got home and looked at the raw files I think I decided that it was just going to be too much work for too little reward, and I instead went to work on more promising shots from earlier in the afternoon. This week I came upon the series of shots again and wondered what I could do with them. My first inclination was to go with the color, and I did come up with a portrait orientation image in color that I will probably post before long. Then, as I began to work on the landscape mode image, I started to see it as having potential as a monochrome image. I tried it. I liked it. And here it is!

This photograph is 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Morning Clouds Above the Manifold, Zabriskie Point

December 12, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 9 Comments

Morning clouds fill the sky above the Manifold at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.

I posted a monochrome version of this photograph yesterday, so there is perhaps a bit less to say about it in this post. To recap briefly, this is a photograph I made over three years ago during a spring visit to Death Valley NPS. This was a bit of a different morning for photographing at Zabriskie Point, if I recall correctly. Usually, photographing here is pretty straightforward – and once you’ve shot it a couple times in “normal” conditions, there is a basic pattern to the progression of light that becomes fairly (though perhaps not totally) clear. Normal conditions here basically mean perfectly clear skies with the sun coming up to the left from the perspective of this photograph or behind in some of the other familiar shots that include Manley Beacon – and light that sequentially illuminates subjects beginning with the highest peaks of the Panamint Range across the Valley and gradually working down into the Valley and finally to the rugged shapes at Zabriskie Point itself.

But clouds can change everything. If I am going to shoot at Zabriskie, I watch for conditions that will bring them. I will generally not stop there if it is “another beautiful clear sunrise” at Zabriskie. (If you haven’t been there before, you should stop and take in this stunning scene, but I’m often looking for something a bit different.) While the results in clear conditions are relatively predictable, they are not at all as predictable when there are clouds. You can end up with something very special… or with a drab, flat, and gray scene. But that’s the thing about special conditions – they wouldn’t be special if they were predictable and frequent!

Thinking back to this morning, my recollection is that it may have been one of those when I arrived to think, “Oh, boy, clouds!” – only to think a bit later, “I wish those clouds would move and give me some light!” I recall some bits of dawn light that were mostly blocked by the clouds. But the very clouds that blocked the hoped-for first dawn light thoughtfully assembled themselves into these impressive forms just a bit later, at right about the time that the warm side-light was getting down into the rugged folds of the Manifold and Gower Wash.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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