Tag Archives: rows

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Farm, Clearing Fog

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Farm, Clearing Fog
“Farm, Clearing Fog” — Soft morning sunlight comes to a small mountain farm as fog clears.

On this summer morning I headed over the mountains for the coast, planning to drive north from Santa Cruz and photograph foggy coastal scenes. However, it turned out that there was too much fog for what I had in mind, so I had to recalibrate. There are many lonely little roads that run inland from the Pacific Coast Highway, and I decided at random to explore one of them. I headed up a small valley, crossed some hills, and eventually wound through a narrow valley whose bottomlands held this small farm.

Today a lot of agriculture takes place on large corporate farms, especially here in California where the Central Valley is filled with those gigantic agribusiness operations . But if you poke around a bit off the grid, there are still these little farms in quiet little places. I pulled over and quietly watched the morning sun start to break through the thinning fog.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Agriculture, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Dormant Trees and Fog

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Dormant Trees and Fog
Dormant trees in Central Valley winter tule fog.

Dormant Trees and Fog. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dormant trees in Central Valley winter tule fog.

This is the second in a series of photographs I made of this Central Valley orchard on a very foggy winter morning. On a typical morning with these conditions, there comes a time when the fog begins to move and thin and the light begins to come through the fog and make it glow. (This is tule fog, which forms at night when the moisture level is right, and ends up producing a thin but often very dense layer of low fog.) I had been photographing birds in thicker fog, and when the thinning process began I moved to this location where I thought the trees might be an interesting subject.

In some ways it is an easy matter to photograph a subject like this one. It is naturally mysterious and compelling, both from the fog itself and from the vaguely anthropomorphic forms of the dormant trees. However, once I begin to work with such a subject, things invariably start to become more complicated than I expected — how to create a balanced composition? What camera position gives the most interesting juxtaposition of trunks? How much to focus on trunks and how much on the upper branches How to deal with inevitable intrusions of branches into the scene. My solution is a combination of looking and thinking, relying on intuition, and trying many different approaches.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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