This is a bit of an odd post for this site. While updating older photographs and posts I was unable to locate this one. So I’m sort of semi/maybe/kind of reposting it. The photograph comes from almost two decades ago on one of my many visits to the Big Sur Coastline of California. This visit was on a late-spring day when fog was clearing from coastal bluffs and the surf was active.
Continue reading Big Sur Coast Near Hurricane Point
I intentionally framed this view to exclude everything except the rocky coastline and the wild Pacific Ocean surf. The Pacific Coast Highway (US1) runs along the coastal bluffs just above those far formations, but below these bluffs the ocean and the land do constant battle, with the ocean inevitably winning as it erodes and washes away the land.
When I look at sea stacks like these I am reminded that the water’s edge was once further west, and what are now off-shore outcroppings were once part of the mainland. These peninsulas and sea stacks were left standing far out in the water as the land around them disappeared.
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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
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Way back in June I met up with my friends Franka Gabler and David Hoffman to photograph the upper Big Sur area of the California coast. They were there to see an exhibit of photographs by John Sexton and Anne Larsen, so I did the 90 minute drive down to Big Sur to meet them. After some confusion about who was where — and no cell service to sort it out — I finally figured out that they were on the bluffs above this area where Soberanes Creek enters the Pacific Ocean.
This is a particularly rugged section of the Big Sur coast. While it doesn’t feature the high cliffs that make other areas essentially inaccessible, here there are rugged rocky headlands and many sea stacks, especially in the shallow bay between the Soberanes Creek and Soberanes Point.
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
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(All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.)
We were in Croatia for a week and a half in the summer of 2023, at the end of a ten weeks of travel in (mostly Southern) Europe. Our visit to this country began with a few days in the remarkable old walled city of Dubrovnik. Late one day I decided it was time to circumnavigate the city on the walkways along the top of the old walls that surround it. The day came to an end as I walked, and I made this photograph right around dusk.
You have probably heard of the “rules of composition.” I’m pretty sure I violated most of them, if not all, in this photograph. “Rules” is the wrong context here — that word implies that there are specific right and wrong ways to approach composition. Instead the goal should be to understand the effects of compositional choices on the mood of a photograph. Here I wanted to express the stillness and lack of dynamism in this scene, its peacefulness and quiet. I think that the almost evenly divided vertical helps with that. And I wanted a bit of a sense of mystery — hence the bit of the island intruding into the frame from the far left.
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
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(All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.)
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