Tag Archives: seastacks

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

Sea Stacks, Big Sur Coast

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Sea Stacks, Big Sur Coast
A rugged landscape of coastal sea stacks along the Big Sur coast

Sea Stacks, Big Sur Coast. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A rugged landscape of coastal sea stacks along the Big Sur coast

This photograph comes from an early November transition season day along the Big Sur coast of California when I took a morning and half of the afternoon to drive down and make some photographs. The conditions here can vary widely on a seasonal and daily weather basis. Many summer days start with thick coastal fog, but it can also be crystal clear and even warm. Pacific storm fronts pass through during the winter, bringing rain, spectacular post front clouds, and then an atmosphere cleared of haze.

On this day the sun was trying to take command, but there was a lot of coastal fog haze in the air, and the fog banks were stubbornly persisting over the coastal hills in places. There was enough surf to throw up some additional moisture into the atmosphere right along the shoreline. Here I photographed across a near seascape filled with rocky bluffs and sea stacks, looking toward a more distant shoreline partially obscured by fog and haze.

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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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk

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Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk
Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk

Headlands, Pacific Ocean, Dusk. San Francisco Bay Area, California. January 17, 2013. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dusk light silhouettes the rugged Marin headlands above the Pacific Ocean disappearing into distant haze.

On a day that began with a visit to the De Young Museum (the final weekend of the David Hockney exhibit) we ended up with some hours of free time in San Francisco… so we decided to head across the Golden Gate and try to be in position somewhere for interesting evening light. We didn’t really have a concrete plan, and we could have ended up in the headlands, along the bay, or perhaps further north along the coast. We stopped for coffee and killed a bit of time in the mid-afternoon light, and by the time we finished the early winter sunset was closer than we had expected.

Looking at the late hour (hey, it was a “vacation day!”) we realized that we didn’t have nearly as much time as we imagined, so we quickly figured out that our best bet was just to head back into the Marin Headlands on the very popular Conzelman Road – yes, the place where hundreds or thousands of people go almost every evening to watch the sun set or the fog roll in (or, sometimes, just a plain old wall of fog!) over the Golden Gate. We drove up the road and the crowds were, as expected, large enough that there were few places to park. In fact, I had to pass up a few possible photographic subjects since I could not stop. Eventually we found a place to pull over and get out and take a look. It was a pretty evening, but the view of the City was not unusually spectacular and I left my camera equipment in the car and just enjoyed the evening view and crisp air. As I stood there, I saw that the backlight over the Pacific outside the golden gate was starting to produce a beautiful diffused light over the water as the atmosphere became increasingly opaque toward the horizon. So I grabbed the tripod and camera and walked up the road a ways to make a few photographs of the ocean and the steep, rugged Marin Headlands cliffs plunging toward the edge of the water.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: San Francisco

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

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Marin Headlands, Winter Evening
Marin Headlands, Winter Evening

Marin Headlands, Winter Evening. San Francisco Bay Area, California. January 17, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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 is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.