Tag Archives: scenic

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Tugboat, Dawn, San Francisco Bay

March 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A tugboat traverses San Francisco Bay in foggy dawn light

As I often do when heading north across the Golden Gate Bridge for early morning photography, I stopped to photograph the bridge, the bay, and the City as the day began. Arriving there perhaps almost a half hour before sunrise, we drive up a ways into the hills of the Marin Headlands and walked to a popular overlook to see—and photograph—whatever the rising sun might bring.

I’m tempted to write that “it was an unusual morning,” but after photographing here many, many times I’m catching on that there is perhaps no such thing as a “typical” morning on the bay. The diversity of light and atmosphere and weather and subject is unending. On this morning there was fog, but it wasn’t too thick and, perhaps surprisingly, was mostly not at the Golden Gate itself, but over parts of San Francisco and the inner bay. The water was visible below and the sky above, but that sky was partially obscured by the patterns of high clouds from a passing weather front. All of these clouds made things rather gray and murky for a time, though as the sun rose behind the fog bank far to the east, a subtly rose-colored glow briefly colored the water of the bay. Using a very long lens I focused on the wake of a tugboat beginning its trip towards and beyond the entrance to the bay, with a bit of the San Francisco shoreline, the western span of the Bay Bridge, and the reflection of a brighter portion of the bay near Oakland beyond.

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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, Fog

March 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fog drifts among the trees of a Yosemite Valley forest on a winter morning

A winter morning is almost always a good time to seek out fog in the meadows of Yosemite Valley, but things did not look too promising on this particular morning. We were up very early—well before dawn—and out and about. Since we had photographed from a higher spot with expansive views the previous morning, today it seemed like a good idea to look for more intimate scenes, so we began to check out a few of the centrally located meadows where the fog often forms. However, first looks revealed perfectly clear air. We wandered a bit more and eventually ended up near Curry Village where there was one fog-filled meadow. As far as we could tell, Stoneman Meadow was the only place in the Valley with the conditions we were looking for.

In much the same way that valley-filling fog can move back and forth, thicken and thin, rise and fall, the fog in this meadow was constantly changing. At first the rapid changes made it seem that the fog might be dissipating, so I began shooting fairly quickly, hoping to get something before it was gone. But soon there was a surprising resurgence of the fog, which drifted across the meadow into surrounding trees, rose higher, and hid the view. As it again began to thin I turned my attention to a bit of nearby dense forest and photographed the trees, late and small, as the fog gradually faded away.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, Talus, Winter Fog

March 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog floats across forest and talus fields, Yosemite Valley

I’ll take a cold and foggy winter morning in Yosemite over a blue sky summer day anytime! On this morning I was up reasonably early, though unsure of what I might be able to photograph. The light down in the Valley was tending toward flat and gray, so I thought that it might make sense to go to Tunnel View and hope for some early morning sun that might illuminate the various layers of clouds and mist from behind. That never happened, so I turned my attention instead to the fog down in the Valley.

It is common at this time of year for fog to form in the Valley after precipitation, and it had rained all of the previous day and was threatening to on this morning, too. When the fog starts to form, almost anything can happen. There might only be thin, wispy bits of fog below, or large clouds of fog may form and drift back and forth and up and down the Valley, lowering so that tree tops are visible or rising to cover the upper slopes of peaks and cliffs. On this morning there seemed to be thicker fog far up the Valley, but in the middle section and just below us the fog was thin enough that as it drifted across the forest some trees almost always remained visible. Photographing this was a matter of using a very long lens and then watching closely as the conditions evolved. For a while it might seem like nothing photographically special would happen, and then some combination of fingers of fog moving through trees, a bit of clearing somewhere, a sudden but silent movement of the clouds would happen, and suddenly a composition would appear out of nowhere and often just a suddenly disappear. Here the fog was drifting up into the talus slopes near the base of El Capitan.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Winter Fog, Waterfall, and Trees

March 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Fog rises from Yosemite Valley to obscure the view of forest and waterfall

There is so much to write about this photograph – about the place itself, about what happened on this morning and at this moment, about the feeling of this subject, about the idea of making a photograph with so little detail, and even about some technical stuff. However, I’ll try to keep this relatively short… for now.

I made this photograph on the morning after the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit in The Valley. Because of this event, there were quite a few photographers in the Valley, including a number of friends, and it seemed like most everyone planned to be out early on this morning to make photographs. My morning plans are often a bit vague – sometimes as vague as “I’ll get up early and see if there is any winter fog around” – and that was the case this day. It was overcast, but I thought that it was possible that either some light might appear from the east or that there might be mist and fog cloaking the upper ridges around the Valley. In any case, we eventually ended up a the famous (or infamous, depending upon your point of view! ;-) Tunnel View, where others we knew were already set up. A favorite winter subject in the Valley is the fog, whether it is seen close up as it floats in front of you in one of the meadows or seen from above from a high point such as Tunnel View. I put a long lens on my camera and began to focus mostly on the fog among the trees on the Valley floor.

This fog almost seems like a living thing, constantly in motion and evolving in unexpected ways. One moment there may be little of it, but within moments it thickens and drifts into view. Or it may drift unexpectedly into the Valley from behind you. It rises up the cliff faces, momentarily obscures and then reveals features, and sloshes back and forth across the Valley. For the most part on this morning it seemed to be drifting among the forest trees, occasionally filling nearly the whole floor of the Valley. As we photographed, the fog moved in our direction along the Valley floor, and then suddenly but silently rose to cover our position, its cold and damp body momentarily limiting our view to a few feet in front of us. I turned my attention, and my camera, downwards toward the trees immediately below the overlook since they were still somewhat visible, and as the fog began to thin once again Bridal Veil falls became momentarily visible once again above the soft edge of the fog.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: scenic

Tugboat, Dawn, San Francisco Bay

Forest, Fog

Winter Fog, Waterfall, and Trees

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