Tag Archives: season

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

Beach, Evening Surf, Big Sur

Image December 28, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter surf rolls onto a Big Sur coastline beach at sunset.

The Big Sur coastline, along the Pacific Coast Highway between San Francisco and Southern California is — not a secret! — a spectacular place. It is also a place of contrasts — between land and sea, between calm summers and stormy winters, between wild surf and quieter times. A week ago I visited during high surf, with waves of up to forty feet high battering the shoreline. This time, as we took the look route back north from Los Angeles, the ocean was quiet.

Since we were driving through and photography wasn’t my primary reason for being there, we took the scenery as it came. During the final hour of daylight I began to think about finding a spot to stop and photograph the last few minutes of light. With ten minutes to spare we came around a headland and I saw this familiar scene of coastal mountains and bays extending to the north, with the Pacific Coast Highway (and one of its famous bridges) dwarfed by the landscape. I quickly found a spot along the edge of the bluff to set p my tripod, and I had a few minutes to photograph gentle evening color and coastal haze before an offshore cloud bank “turned out the lights.”

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 and Amazon.

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

Headlands And Mist

Image December 23, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Strong late-autumn surf raises clouds of mist above rocky headlands along the Big Sur coast.

Today I continue with photographs from my visit to the upper Big Sur coastline in the middle of December, on a day when distant Gulf of Alaska weather fronts were sending giant surf crashing against the beaches, sea stacks, and cliffs. This is perhaps my favorite set of conditions for California coastal photography — a clear, post-storm day with giant surf that raises a layer of mist along the shoreline. When I see reports of such conditions I try my best to get over there quickly!

On the drive down, even as I passed Monterey Bay I could see the effects on the water. Waves in the bay didn’t seem unusually large, but off in the distance I could see the land at the northwest end of the Monterey Peninsula where gigantic white breakers created a line against the horizon. Once I got south of Carmel and right next to the coast the picture was even clearer, and I soon stopped on a bluff to get “up close and personal” (but from a safe spot) with the show. I made this photograph a bit further south in a spot that I’ve photographed many times. Here there is a view across several rocky ribs at the water’s edge and on to a taller hill beyond — and I know this as a spot with great potential for surf and light and for raising clouds of spray and mist.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Color Panorama

Image December 13, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Eastern Sierra aspen trees in transition from summer to fall color on a cloudy afternoon

There is a pretty good chance that this will be my final fall aspen color photograph from the 2018 fall season. In some ways the season felt a bit different, but the grand pattern was a familiar one. The slight variations included what seemed like a slightly early appearance of color at high elevations — we saw some pretty decent color a full week before the end of September. The main part of the season seemed relatively typical, though I did find color appearing a bit later (surprise!) than expected in a few places I visited about a week into October. That was my final visit, but I did hear from folks who were still finding green groves at the end of the third week of the month. I don’t want to make too much of these observations, as I’ve started to feel that that general timetable does remain fairly similar

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens Ascending A Gully

Image November 23, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful autumn aspen trees ascend a gully in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

In the past I have looked at this grove but not photographed it. Unfortunately, it stands in close proximity to an Eastern Sierra Nevada “feature” that has long troubled me — a fake waterfall apparently created by a nearby homeowner who seems to have redirected a stream over the top of an outcropping in order to make his/her backyard more picturesque. Unfortunately, once you see how this was done you cannot unsee it, and the “waterfall” becomes an annoying and even insulting feature.

But there are these trees. And they are quite nice, following a narrow gully in the break between two outcroppings of solid Sierra rock. I like the way that the ascending band of trees narrows as it rises, almost suggesting a queue of travelers passing through a narrow pass. There are also some beautiful and colorful trees stretched across the bench at the top of the outcroppings. Finally, these trees are in the state of color transition that I’m almost ready to say I enjoy the most — that stage where a few trees are intensely yellow/gold and others are still just barely beginning to change.