Tag Archives: reflection

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

Edge of the Light

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Edge of the Light
Light at the edge of a Pacific Coast fog bank on a summer evening.

Edge of the Light. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Light at the edge of a Pacific Coast fog bank on a summer evening.

By this point I am quite familiar with this coastline below California’s Monterey Peninsula — I’ve been visiting almost continuously since I was a child and my parents took the family down there for day trips and rare overnights in Monterey. We went to Point Lobos all the time, where I spent days investigating tide pools and hiking trails along the shoreline.

All of this may partially be my way of explaining why I might make a photograph like this —not a typical “tourist shot” of the rugged Big Sur coast, but something much quieter. The fog is a near-constant presence here, often coming onshore and muting colors and light and condensing the visual world. When it isn’t over the land it is often just off shore — perhaps far enough out that you have to look for it or, as here, right along the shoreline. The edge of the fog bank can be a place of amazing light — dark in distance beneath the clouds and surprisingly bright along the edges and where beams of light reflect off the water.

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: Architecture, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Mondrian Wall

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Mondrian Wall
“Mondrian Wall” — A wall of a school building closed during the pandemic.

Why, yes, this is from the “Postcards from Pandemia” series of photographs made on my almost-daily walks in the greater neighborhood, an area including a range of subjects in suburban neighborhoods, apartment complexes, closed schools, nearly empty parks, a largely shuttered business district, and light industrial zones.

This is a detail of a wall at the front of a school that is became deserted at about the time when students would have been pushing through the last part of the academic year and looking forward to summer. If you are like me, you might find more than one way to look at this scene.

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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

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Central California

Dawn Fog, Central Valley

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Dawn Fog, Central Valley
Dawn fog rises from a drainage canal in California Central Valley agricultural country.

Dawn Fog, Central Valley. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dawn fog rises from a drainage canal in California Central Valley agricultural country.

This area of California’s Central Valley, not far from Sacramento, is a somewhat special place for me despite its relatively mundane appearance. It isn’t a park, you won’t find it on any maps, it is at the terminus of a narrow dead-end road. But it is the place where I “discovered” the state’s migratory birds and began photographing them. I had not really been interested in the subject at all until one morning I had a chance encounter with a colleague in the coffee line at my college. She told me I should go look at this place — “There are lots of birds.” For some reason, a few days later I arose well before dawn and drove a couple of hours to take a look..

She was right. There were lots of birds. Clouds of them, flying in all directions. I more or less had no idea what any of them were — I think I simply figured they were all “geese” — but I was hooked. (In fact I saw cranes, tundra swans, ibises, egrets, and, yes, lots of geese.) On this later trip I paused out on the little road and photographed back toward the early morning sky as fog rose from the water in an irrigation channel.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Tree, Lake, Granite Bench

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Tree, Lake, Granite Bench
A solitary tree grows along the shoreline of an alpine lake below Sierra Nevada granite benches

Tree, Lake, Granite Bench. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary tree grows along the shoreline of an alpine lake below Sierra Nevada granite benches.

This is another “quiet light” photograph, made during the “edge of the day” times when the light is muted and soft, when the glow of light on nearby rocks gently enters the scene. During these hours, especially in the morning, the air is still and cool, the reflective surface of water is unbroken, and the world is a quiet place.

I made this photograph very near to our weeklong backcountry base camp, in a high, rocky spot nestled in the curving shore of an 11,000′ lake in a valley full of meadows, boulders, and running water. The high valley was surrounded by even higher peaks, and every morning before the sun rose above those ridges we have and hour of more of this light.

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.

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