Tag Archives: rugged

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

Coastline, Dusk

February 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light falls across the rugged Big Sur coastline, California

This was a very special bit of end-of-day light. Earlier we had spent about nine hours driving south between Monterey and Piedras Blancas on the Big Sur coast, stopping frequently along the way to make photographs of the beautiful winter light. At the southern end of our drive we spent time photographing the elephant seals at their “nursery” alongside the road – a popular place for observing this amazing creatures, especially at this time of year when the females are giving birth and the beach is crowded with all sorts of elephant seals: bulls, females, new babies.

Finishing here, it was time to turn the car north again and head back the way we had come. We started up the Pacific Coast Highway and very soon began the first climb into the coastal hills. We kept an eye out for potential gold hour photographic subjects. There are, of course, no shortage of them along this spectacular coastline, so we figured that we would find something no matter where we were during the last hour of light even though we had no specific plan yet. Eventually we came to a place where we had stopped earlier on the southward drive and we pulled off. Earlier, closer to the middle of the day, the light had been very bright here, illuminating coastal haze and reflecting off the ocean surface in a way that reminds me of molten metal. But now the light was lower and coming in at a more direct angle, and the atmosphere softened and the colors warmed in the late-day light. At first the light was more intense and I made a few photographs with the scene brilliantly colored. At one point I looked away to photograph something else, and when I looked back the sun had dropped behind a semi-transparent band of clouds near the horizon, significantly muting the brightness and color of the light on the base of the hills, but still leaving a few intense spots higher up.

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

Sunset Light, Big Sur

February 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter sunset light on the rugged Big Sur coastline

On the final day of January we took a long drive down and then back up the Pacific Coast Highway between the Monterey Peninsula and Piedras Blancas, where we knew we could see and photograph the elephant seals that gather here on the coast every winter. We took our time on the southward drive, taking nearly nine hours to reach our southern destination – and stopping frequently along the way to make photographs. (OK, for coffee and meals, too…) After photographing the elephant seals in the late afternoon, it was time to start our return trip.

There is so much to see along this coast that it is unusual to be left wondering what to photograph, so the general – and somewhat vague – plan was to take stock of where we found ourselves during the hour or so before sunset and to then find a suitable golden hour and dusk subject to photograph. Perhaps 45 or 50 minutes before sunset we came to an overlook where we had photographed much earlier in the day and decided that this would be the place. Here the coastline arcs south, with rugged mountains dropping right down to the shoreline with its sea stacks, rocky prominences, and hidden beaches. Our overlook was high enough to provide an expansive view of this scene, and it didn’t hurt that a couple of large rocky islands, one with a natural arch, were located right below. You never know how a sunset and evening will turn out in photographic terms and you must more or less take what you get. On the plus side, there were thin, high clouds to the west that wrapped around to the south, and these clouds can produce a lot of color if lit from below right at sunset and shortly after. There was also some haze to the west to soften the light. On the other hand, there also appeared to be a somewhat thicker band of clouds and for right near the horizon, and this can “turn the lights out” at just the wrong moment. I made this photograph as the golden hour light began to intensely color the shoreline. I quickly made a series of photographs in landscape and portrait orientation, moving a bit in between to change the juxtaposition of elements a bit. At one point I looked away for a moment… and when I looked back the color had almost gone as the sun passed behind those thicker clouds. Yes, it happens that quickly and imperceptibly sometimes.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Titus Canyon Road

February 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Titus Canyon Road descents into upper Titanothere Canyon before climbing to Red Pass

Early December is a fine time to be in Death Valley National Park, and I managed to spend five days there this past December. The weather is cooler this time of year – in fact, temperatures dropped into the upper twenties in the Valley during my visit and well down into the teens in some of the upper elevations that I visited during the pre-dawn hours. Although seasoned Death Valley visitors prefer to visit during the cooler months, things seem much quieter than a few months later in the spring. In fact, I almost had the entire Stovepipe Wells campground to myself on my first night!

The relative solitude extended to this day, on which I drove over the Amargosa Range via Titus Canyon Road, the rough back-country one-way route between the Amargosa Valley and Death Valley itself. I know this route fairly well, having been over it a number of times. I always start in the morning, and this trip was no exception – I was well out on to the route when the sun came up. Often I just take a few hours for the trip, stopping at a few key locations. But recently I have thought more about how I might photograph some of these places that I used to simply drive through, and on this visit I slowed way down and devoted almost the entire day to this area. The location in this photograph is an example of the sort of area that I might have just passed through in the past. Here the road traverses the upper reaches of a very large canyon that eventually spills out into Death Valley far below. The location from which I made the photograph marks the high point on the route, and I always stop there – but on some previous visits I have just regarded the terrain as being empty. It isn’t, and I’m learning to see it more clearly. Here the gravel road drops down from the previous ridge, winding through the rough and dry landscape to the bottom of the canyon and its dry stream bed before climbing steeply up to my camera position.

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

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

January 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden evening haze over the Pacific Coast below the rugged cliffs of the Marin headlands

How we ended up here on this evening in a slightly complicated and random story. Our main goal was to go San Francisco’s De Young Museum, where the big show of David Hockney’s work was entering its final days – we had been planning to go but somehow the time passed and it was now or never. I’d write, “It is a great show and you should go…” but it is too late! Hockney’s work is engrossing and compelling and includes subjects that a landscape photographer can identify with. (Hockney’s relationship to photography is interesting and, it seems, a bit complex. He is known for some photo collages that he created, yet he disparages photography or at least the way photography is often done. He apparently said something about photography along the lines of it being fine if you want to view the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops. Ouch!)

We spent a few hours in the exhibit and then it was mid afternoon. There were still a couple of hours of light left, so we decided to head across the Golden Gate Bridge, but with only the vaguest of plans in mind. (Basically the plan consisted of “Coffee and then look for something before the light is gone.”) By the time we got over there and were ready to look for light, we realized that we had only a short time before the light would go and we would have to head back over the bridge to get dinner. (We had reservations at a favorite Indian restaurant.) We realized that we had only enough time to drive up into the headlands on our way to the bridge, so up Conzelman Road we went. I missed a mysterious and ominous photograph of a large freighter in the haze outside the Golden Gate since I wasn’t able to find a place to stop and park – but we finally managed to park the car and get out and look around. I did not take my camera gear out at first, since I have more than enough photographs of The City and the bridge at sunset, but soon I became interested in the backlit glow around the rugged cliffs dropping to the water to the west and then the expanse of glowing, hazy air stretching over the water towards the horizon, where water and sky merged invisibly.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: rugged

Coastline, Dusk

Sunset Light, Big Sur

Titus Canyon Road

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.