Tag Archives: reyes

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Tomales Bay Building, Morning Fog

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Tomales Bay Building, Morning Fog
Tomales Bay Building, Morning Fog

Tomales Bay Building, Morning Fog. Tomales Bay, California. February 9, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a Tomales Bay shoreline building with morning fog along nearby hills

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am fortunate to be within a few hours driving distance of the Point Reyes National Seashore, so I shoot there fairly regularly. I had a free morning on this early February day, so I decided to drive up that way with the intention of being there for dawn. I didn’t quite make it for the actual sunrise – at that point I was driving through foggy redwood forest – but I got to the road that travels along the edge of Tomales Bay on the way to the “point” shortly after sunrise, and as the fog was clearing from over the water and the hills.

This structure is what I think of as the “Launch for Hire” building, since a very large size with that announcement has been painted on both sides. I haven’t stopped to photograph here much at all in the past, but the early light was interesting on this morning – foggy to the north toward the entrance to Tomales Bay, and backlight fog and trees to the east – so I spent a bit of time photographing along here. I shot the building from both sides – the side facing into the “golden hour” early morning light, and the deeply shaded backside of the building with the very bright morning light and thinning fog beyond. In the latter case, there was a glow in the windows of this building, on pilings out over the water, from the light coming into its interior through windows on the far side facing the rising sun.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Fog and Blue Sky, Drakes Bay

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Fog and Blue Sky, Drakes Bay - Fog intrudes on blue sky over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore
Fog intrudes on blue sky over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore

Fog and Blue Sky, Drakes Bay. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. August 18, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fog intrudes on blue sky over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore.

One more “minimal seascape” from my mid-August visit to Point Reyes National Seashore – a short visit of mostly an afternoon, on which I headed to Limantour looking for sun along the coast. That’s not quite what I found – but you can never be sure what the weather will do along this section of the Pacific coastline. Descending on the final bit of road to the beach, it was apparent that I was going to be dealing with fog. This photograph is looking more or less southwest, but straight to the west and to the northwest things were already completely socked in. After making this photograph I finished the drive to Limantour and then took a walk out toward some of the nearby estuaries – and that entire walk was under fog and in cold wind.

I have been doing a series of minimal seascape photographs for some time now, making a few more images of this type whenever I happen to be near the coast and conditions are right. These photographs are a bit trickier than they might appear. It almost looks like I could just point that camera out toward the ocean and make them – and, in fact, when I started this it almost seemed like it might be that easy. Before long I figured out that if I worked that way I would end up with… photos that looked like I just pointed the camera out toward the ocean. So I look for scenes, usually involving some sort of clouds, fog, or mist and often some interesting lighting that seem to create, for the most part, nice stable images that may have a bit more going on in them if you have time to look closely, and which also usually might evoke some sense of the calm and stability of the sea. Here I was mostly interested in the clouds, but I decided to anchor the sky to just a thin strip of water, darker blue but also partly obscured by the lower edge of the fog bank. I aimed toward a boundary area between the blue sky and the thicker fog, and captured an area of transition where both sky and fog are in play. Believe it or not, there was a fair amount of work to be done in post, including getting the right amounts of contrast and pushing the brightest parts of the clouds just far enough to create a feeling of light, but not so far as to look fake.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Hills and Trees Near Limantour, Drakes Bay

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Hills and Trees Near Limantour, Drakes Bay - Soft sun light on trees and hills above Limantour Beach, as fog bank hovers over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore.
Soft sun light on trees and hills above Limantour Beach, as fog bank hovers over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore.

Hills and Trees Near Limantour, Drakes Bay. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. August 18,2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft sun light on trees and hills above Limantour Beach, as fog bank hovers over Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore.

Limantour Beach sits along the inner curve of Drakes Bay at the Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco, California, and the area is one of the best-known and most visited in the park. On certain days, the air is clear and the sun is bright and the beach can be warm, and the view includes not only the nearby wildlife and the surf, but the peninsula leading to the tip of Point Reyes and the coast stretching south towards the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate. One of the first times I visited this place to make photographs it was one of those clear days, and I recall photographing the curve of the Bay leading to the right with the beach and some birds in the foreground. I’ve carried a mental images of how I would like to improve that photograph, and it was with that in mind that I went to Limantour this time.

The weather did not cooperate with that plan. After crossing the ridge between Tomales Bay and Limantour, I could see right away that there was going to be fog along the beach. The shoreline edge of the water still reflected blue sky in a few spots a bit to the south, but at Limantour the fog came a good distance inland from the beach. So as I drove down toward the end of the road, I started looking for some spot that would let me photograph the rounded, grass-covered hills and the bits of forest in sunlight, with the Bay and its fog in the distance. Finding a spot that included all of these things and which made some visual sense was not easy, but with a bit of back-tracking I finally found this spot and made a few exposures.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Drakes Bay, Fog

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Drakes Bay, Fog - Fog bank suspended above the surface of Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore
Fog bank suspended above the surface of Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore

Drakes Bay, Fog. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. August 18, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fog bank suspended above the surface of Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Seashore.

What could possibly go together more naturally than fog and Point Reyes? Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Point Reyes National Seashore is one of those treasures that is close enough that I can manage to visit frequently and throughout the year. However, I’m still trying to “get my mind around” the place as a photographic subject. Some aspects of it are relatively easy to see in photographic terms – these include some of the wildlife (such as elephant seals and tule elk), the tall and rocky coastal bluffs and the beaches often found below them, and certain beaches. Others are not, at least for me, so obvious. I find that some very beautiful things, such as the dense forests of short trees, hills covered with dry grasses and scattered bushes, and fog shrouded valleys, are not always easy subjects from which to make effective photographs.

This scene (if “scene” is the word for it) could be almost anywhere in along the hundreds of miles of the California Pacific coast, and it belongs to my “minimalist seascape” thread, something I’ve been attracted to for a while now. On this afternoon I had decided to go to Limantour Beach, hoping for sun and enough clarity in the air that I could make some photographs across Drakes Bay that I’ve been thinking about. Earlier in the day, things looked promising for that, but when I arrived the fog bank was hovering just along the shoreline and making its way inland nearby. Looking a bit more to the south, the sky was clear – and in between these areas there was a wonderful play of light between the areas covered by fog and the occasional gaps where more light still shone through.

I have been there a couple of times this month and on both occasions I had… fog!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.