Tag Archives: shoreline

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

Shoreline Trees and Mist

May 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Silhouettes of shoreline trees on a misty morning at Tomales Bay, California

This photograph was made along the shoreline of Tomales Bay, near Inverness, California and north of San Francisco very near to the Point Reyes National Seashore. I was there, in fact, to visit Point Reyes. As I passed through the Inverness area, the sun rose over the fog-shrouded hills of Marin County, and I decided to stop right there, short of my actual goal, and make some photographs in this interesting early morning light.

Looking to my left and toward the northern entrance to Tomales Bay, everything was front- or side-lit, the sun shone brightly, colors were intense, and the fog was clearing. Looking to my right, I was facing directly into the rising sun and seeing it through the misty remnants of fog along the Marin hills, and the colors were washed out by the atmosphere and bright light. I used a long lens to pick out this row of shoreline trees from the larger landscape and to be able to make a photograph that excluded the sun itself. But it was still very bright. Mist rises off of the foreground water of the bay and a bit of fog still lurks beyond the trees. To look at this photograph you might think you are seeing a monochrome image that has been sepia toned… but this is the actual color of the light in these conditions.

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: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Davenport Bluffs, Dusk

January 22, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light on a series of bluffs marching south from Davenport, California

This photograph comes from early December, 2012, when I attempted to join a group of folks on a “photowalk” in the Santa Cruz, California area. I was originally supposed to meet up with them at Henry Cowell park (for photography of redwoods), but missed that mid-morning rendezvous due to my own scheduling issues. I knew they would be heading over to the area near Davenport, just up the coast from Santa Cruz, a bit later in the morning. So I headed over there… and ended up eating my lunch along in a restaurant about 100 yards north of the restaurant where they were all meeting! Then I somehow missed the next rendezvous almost directly across the street, and instead ended up on nearby coastal bluffs to do my photography.

This photograph was the last one I made that evening, well after the sun had set. It was quite dark by this point, so much so that after I finished and packed up it was becoming difficult to see the path back to my car. Exposures were getting quite long – this one was, I believe, about 30 seconds long, and I had been successively opening up my aperture in order to keep the exposure time down to a reasonable half-minute. Often some of the most interesting and evocative light can come after sunset, sometimes well after sunset. The light softens and diffuses, as it comes from large areas of the sky and not from the point source of the sun. The colors change, heading toward blue but also including other subtle tones such as the pinks seen in the clouds in this photograph. And the longer exposures allow me to create a sort of fantastical effect by letting surf and spray blur out over the long exposures. (For a night photographer like me, such images also raise interesting questions about where the boundaries between “night photography” and just plain photography lie.)

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Evening Light on Shoreline Trees, Steelhead Lake

October 14, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early evening light coming across the Sierra crest illuminates shoreline trees at Steelhead Lake, eastern Sierra Nevada.

This photograph was made during that quiet evening hour, about the time when dinner has been finished and food stowed for the night, sleeping bag set up in tent, and things slow down (from their already-slow pace!) as the golden hour light comes on. Typically, the afternoon wind decreases and the lake surface becomes smooth, more clearly revealing the fish rising for an evening meal.

This is another photograph made within a few feet of my bivy sack campsite on a peninsula rising above this lake in the McGee Creek drainage. As I had eaten dinner with my two backpacking partners, I had been keeping an eye on this little scene that I had checked out earlier in the afternoon, watching to see if the four small trees down near the water might catch the last light from the setting sun before the evening shadow came across the lake.

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

Sea Stacks and Coastal Bluffs, Northern California

October 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Haze obscures sea stacks and bluffs along the rugged Pacific Ocean coastline of Northern California.

I made this photograph almost a year ago, from just about the same location as a more recent photograph of this scene that I posted a month or so ago. The location is along the Mendocino County coastline of northern California, a rugged and beautiful section of the state. Here the coast highway travels very close to the water along high bluffs that overlook the Pacific, and this particular cove holds this two-peaked island or sea stack and is backed by receding coastal bluffs that extend out into the water. In the far distance the shoreline to the south curves gently back towards the west, creating a large and very shallow bay.

The personality of this land and seascape changes constantly. On a (rare) completely clear day, the view to the farther shoreline might be easier to make out, but on the many foggy days the foreground scene could well be completely obscured. On this morning, most of the fog had cleared back from the coast, leaving a softly hazy atmosphere that amplified the effects of distance, and the surf was creating low clouds of spray along the coastline.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: shoreline

Shoreline Trees and Mist

Davenport Bluffs, Dusk

Evening Light on Shoreline Trees, Steelhead Lake

Sea Stacks and Coastal Bluffs, Northern California

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