Tag Archives: sea

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seal and Rock, Water’s Edge

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Elephant Seal and Rock, Water's Edge - An elephant seal lies near a rock at the edge of the surf, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
An elephant seal lies near a rock at the edge of the surf, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

Elephant Seal and Rock, Water’s Edge. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. June 24, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An elephant seal lies near a rock at the edge of the surf, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

The elephant seals have made what seems like a largely successful recovery along the California coast, and they are now found in quite a few places. I photographed this one and some of its fellows while doing landscape photography at Point Reyes – the actual point, not just the generic park – in late June. They are big beasts and while it is possible to make a “cute” photograph of an elephant seal, especially a young one, they seem like quite tough creatures. To begin with, their environment is not always exactly benign. In addition, they spar. Males have a challenge ritual that is fairly often observed. They face off, raising their upper bodies as high as possible, and then they slash and bite at one another. The result is not always pretty, at it isn’t at all unusual to see them bearing some very horrifying wounds from these battles.

This one, however, looks quite peaceful. (The fighting action was taking place just off shore and out of the range of the camera in this shot.) As I paused along a less windy section of the trail along the bluffs, hoping to find some shelter while I switched lenses, I heard the distinctive sounds of the elephant seals coming from the base of the bluffs. Looking over the edge into a small cove, I saw a group of them laid out along the beach. Soon they began to move about, and some headed straight for the water. This one went just a bit beyond the wave line, and then simply lazed about and let the water wash over.

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, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seals in Surf

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Elephant Seals in Surf - Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.
Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

Elephant Seals in Surf. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. June 24, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two elephant seals spar in the surf at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

After over a month of not exposing a single frame, I needed to go out and start shooting again this past week. (June is often a very busy time of year for me, and this June was especially challenging in a number of ways.) So, even though it is finals week at the college and I have a lot of papers to grade and loose ends to tie up, I managed to get away for a half day to photograph at Point Reyes. I went there with few specific ideas about what to shoot, instead just sort of hanging loose, enjoying whatever I could find, and making photographs as I found them. I started by taking an unplanned detour out towards Tomales Point – I was sort of killing time while waiting for the light to do the right stuff, and I thought it would be interesting to head out there and see the tule elk. After that I returned to the main road and headed out toward the Point Reyes lighthouse.

It actually was not my plan to go to the lighthouse, and didn’t even drive the last little bit of roadway to that site. Instead I took the turn towards the start of the Chimney Rock trail, with a general plan of being high up on the bluffs of this southernmost section of the Point when the good light arrived. I pulled in, at a sandwich for dinner, loaded up my camera gear, and headed out along the trail. I had a few things in mind. I know that shooting back along the steep, rocky cliffs of the Point late in the day can be dramatic, and I started by photographing there – fortunately my timing turned out to be almost exactly right, as I caught a last bit of light on the mist and haze along the shoreline before the sun moved too far north to continue to light the area. I then moved on out the end of the trail, where I just sat for a while as I waited for the early evening color to come to the light. I made a few photographs out here, stopped again along the bluffs to photograph along the point (but the best light had passed), made a few photographs back across Drakes Bay, and then started back towards a low point, protected from the wind, from which I thought I might try to photograph the Farallons right at sunset. Once I got there, the light on the islands seemed uninteresting, but I soon realized that the guttural sounds of elephant seals that I had been hearing were coming from the base of the cliff on which I was standing. I moved a bit closer to the edge – but not too close! – and was able to shoot straight down on a group of elephant seals as they alternately lay around on the beach and sparred in the shallow surf just beyond the sand.

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.

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

Fog, Surf, and Rocks

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Fog, Surf, and Rocks - Midday sun glows through coastal fog bank above offshore rocks and surf, Point Lobos State Reserve.
Midday sun glows through coastal fog bank above offshore rocks and surf, Point Lobos State Reserve.

Fog, Surf, and Rocks. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. March 29, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Midday sun glows through coastal fog bank above offshore rocks and surf, Point Lobos State Reserve.

I made a new photograph in the “barely there” series today at Point Lobos. It was a surprisingly good photography day at Point Lobos. I say this because when I started out this morning things did not look very promising at all. At my home, it was cloudy and gray – but since at least one weather forecast mentioned sun down in the Monterey Peninsula area, I decided to give it a try. As I drove south it got worse – I ended up in very thick fog during the first 30 minutes or so of my drive. However, recalling that when there is inland fog this time of year there is often clearing at the coast, I decided to keep going. A few miles from Monterey the skies began to clear, leaving some pockets of fog here and there with high thin clouds above. Now things were looking up! High, thin clouds can provide excellent conditions for many kinds of landscape shooting, since these conditions soften that shadows and take the harsh edge off of the light.

Arriving at Point Lobos I could see there was fog a good distance off shore, but beautiful light was shining through the forest along the entrance road. I headed down to Whalers Cove and went for a hike around the far side of the cove, and ended up spending the better part of three hours poking around in this area. By the time I got back to my car it was lunch time, and I decided to at least head out to the west-facing shoreline to look around before leaving. When I got there, the offshore fog bank had moved in and was starting to flow across the shoreline. A bit further south I could see the backlit fog lit brilliantly by the sun and almost obscuring the rocks and islands in the Bird Island area. In fact, by the time I got my camera on the tripod, these islands had completely disappeared. I waited a bit, and their shapes began to again barely emerge from the 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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Three Tule Elk, Grassland

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Three Tule Elk, Grassland - Three tule elk grazing along the headlands area at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Three tule elk grazing along the headlands area at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Three Tule Elk, Grassland. Point Reyes National Seashore, California. May, 30, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three tule elk grazing along the headlands area at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Although I was certainly aware that there are tule elk herds at Point Reyes National Seashore, I was not thinking about them when we encountered this group. We had driven out to the Point Reyes lighthouse and other areas at the extreme end of the peninsula, and had then stopped at Drakes Beach on the return trip. Finishing up at the beach, we got back in the car and headed up the hill towards the main road. As we reached an area near the top of the hill I thought I saw something moving off to the side, but I initially failed to recognize what I was seeing because the possibility of such animals in this place was not on my mind. I thought I was perhaps seeing a fence or something similar, but I couldn’t make sense out of why the fence would be moving!

A moment later we were a bit closer and it was obvious that a small herd of the tule elk were grazing very close to the fence along the road. I got out of the car and quietly attached a long lens to my camera and began to photograph these animals. The lighting and other circumstances were nearly perfect. It was very late in the day and the golden hour light had just started, and the backdrop was either the rolling hills you see here or, if I moved a bit to one side, some higher hills further to the west. This group of three large animals was moving, along with other animals not included in this shot, away from the road and further out into the meadows. As the three of them lined up in parallel, for a moment one swung its head around and looked directly towards me.

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.