Tag Archives: reflection

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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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.

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

Canyon Wall and Reflections

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Canyon Wall and Reflections
A vertical canyon wall is reflected in the Utah canyon stream.

Canyon Wall and Reflections. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A vertical canyon wall is reflected in the Utah canyon stream.

A small group of photographers spent a couple days exploring this canyon, walking in from its wide mouth and soon being surrounded by tall sandstone cliffs and cut off from the outside world. On the first day it was quite cold and we faced the challenge of wind — which created some big challenges when photographing in the shadowed depths of the canyon. We had some success, but a few days later we decided to return and try for a day with less wind.

In this canyon I recognized a lesson that I suppose I already knew subconsciously. As we worked out way downstream we were balancing the distance we could travel against the amount of time we spend on each subject and calculating our necessary turn-around time if we were to exit the canyon in daylight. But it is hard to stop exploring such a place, and more that once we would round a bend, see another section of canyon come into view, and say, “just this one more section.” Then we’d reach the next bend, feel the need to explore it, catch a glimpse of what was around the next bend and, well, you get the idea. If I recall correctly, this was the final bend at which we realized that we had to reverse course. It was a lovely spot, extremely still and quiet, with the small stream flowing gently past the bottom of a very large and rugged cliff in deep shadows.

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.