Tag Archives: reflection

Photographs: San Francisco

Pier, China Camp

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Pier, China Camp
An old pier at the historic China Camp State Park, San Pablo Bay.

Pier, China Camp. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

DeAn old pier at the historic China Camp State Park, San Pablo Bay.scription

China Camp, along the shores of the San Pablo Bay lobe of San Francisco Bay has a remarkable history, one that I was unaware of until perhaps a decade ago despite living the Bay Area almost my entire life. The name recognizes that the location was a settlement of Chinese immigrants in the 1880s, and there was a substantial village here that developed a shrimp fishing industry. Although that began to fall apart early in the 20th Century, the last resident was still there late in the 1900s before the area became a park, saving it from industrial or suburban development.

Today it is a remarkably quiet place in the midst of a very busy Bay Area. Buildings and other elements of the earlier village still exist and have been restored, and it is interesting to ponder the lives of the people who lived there. This photograph features an old pier that extends out into the bay from the area of the remaining buildings.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Rat Rock, Winter Morning

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Photo of Rat Rock, Winter Morning, San Francisco Bay
“Rat Rock, Winter Morning” — Rat Rock and morning clouds reflected in San Pablo Bay.

Despite living in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly my entire life, it wasn’t until perhaps a decade ago that I “discovered” this location along the shores of San Pablo Bay, the northern arm of the San Francisco Bay. I had joined up with a group of (too many) photographers — one of those early Google Plus crowds — to photograph in various places north of the Golden Gate, and eventually we ended up here. I had seen photographs of this small island before, but I did not know its location. And, yes, it really is called “Rat Rock.”

I made this photograph on a return visit a few years later, this time by myself. Considering all of the possible sky and weather conditions in this location, I was incredibly lucky to arrive for this lovely sky and relatively calm waters to reflect the clouds. Some years ago I created a version of a very similar photograph from the same day, but I recently reviewed the raw files and decided that I like this one a bit better now.

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 and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Clearing the Channel

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Clearing the Channel
Equipment poised to clear a channel in agricultural land, Central Valley.

Clearing the Channel. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Equipment poised to clear a channel in agricultural land, Central Valley.

As I queue up this photograph for posting in the next week or two at the website, it seems oddly appropriate that I’m sharing a winter photograph on the final day before autumn begins. My photographic interests evolve seasonally, and I’m usually thinking a season or two into the future. These Central Valley landscape, along with the migratory birds that visit them each year, become my focus in the late autumn and winter.

Aside from the current — and deeply concerning — climate changes, there are variations from year to year. In the Central Valley they might be seen in the onset of the first rain, the overall humidity of a season, and whether or not there is enough rain to leave flood pools in the lowlands. There were back in this year, and I made this photograph on a very foggy morning, when I came across a piece of equipment staged to clear out one of the flooding channels in an agricultural region of the valley.

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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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: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Showers

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Sierra Showers
“Sierra Showers” — Afternoon thundershower clouds reflected in the surface of a raindrop-dappled alpine lake, Kings Canyon National Park.

As I was getting ready to post this photograph I was pondering, as usual, what to write about it. As I considered the focus of what I ended up writing here today it occurred to me that this one photograph could be the starting point for an entire book. (Don’t worry, I’ll keep this post considerably shorter than that.) It could naturally lead to subjects including my visits and return visits to certain locations in the Sierra, the experience of spending long periods in the backcountry, what and how to see there, the sensory experiences of things like afternoon rain, how non-iconic subjects evoke these things, my good fortune in photographing the backcountry in the company of good friends during the last decade, and much more…

But that’s far too much for this post, so I’ll just share a little background. A group of five of us isolated ourselves at a very high backcountry location for a week back in 2013. We photographed morning and evening every day, in very diverse conditions, and we hung out together through the slower midday hours. There were many lakes nearby, and on this afternoon I had walked the short distance to one of them and was photographing when the afternoon showers began. For me, this photograph conjures up all of the associations I have with that trip and with afternoons like this one.

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


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