Tag Archives: silhouette

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Tomales Bay Hills, Morning

September 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Early morning light on clearing fog and mist in the hills above Tomales Bay, California

I had headed up towards Point Reyes National Seashore, which is not at all far from Inverness, very early on the cold February morning. I allowed myself to be distracted by other sights on the drive up, and so I did not make my planned arrival on Drakes Bay for sunrise. The sun came up as I drove along the shores of quiet Tomales Bay. Since that’s where I was and the light was interesting, I gave up my early morning plans for shooting along the beach inside the park and instead stopped here to photograph instead. When I got out of my car, I was surprised by how cold it was. It isn’t unusual to have sub-freezing morning temperatures in parts of the Bay Area this time of year, but it is unusual when that happens right along the ocean shoreline.

This photograph might serve as proof of my eligibility for membership in the “Shooting Straight Into the Light” school of photography. (No one who has seen a few of my photographs will be surprised by that, I expect! I’m a big fan of back light and bright light shining through things.) From my shooting position along the shore of the bay I had quite a range of different sorts of light. Looking to my left (north) toward the mouth of the bay, shoreline buildings, piers, and moored boats were well-lit by morning light coming from my right. But looking back up the bay the sun was rising above the Marin hills right in front of me as bits of fog floated in a few valleys and on the tidelands of the bay. It was very, very bright and this light almost completely washed out all of the colors that were so visible when looking in other directions.

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: Austria, Photographs: Nature

Cliff-Edge Forest Above Werfen

September 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees and grassy meadow at the edge of a cliff above the town of Werfen, Austria

For looking to be such an astonishingly exposed location, this spot was actually quite easy to get to. Sorry if I disappoint anyone! ;-) Above the town of Werfen, Austria, not far from Salzburg, is a feature known as the Eisriesenwelt Ice Cave. It is a well-known and popular tourist destination, and since our “guides” (family members who live in Germany) suggested it, we went and joined the other tourists. Although this post isn’t really about the ice cave, I’ll at least mention that it is quite a spectacular thing to visit. The cave itself is quite something, but so is the process of getting to it. The cave is located very high up the face of a cliff above the Salzach River valley, in a place that you would hardly imagine would be accessible by normal folks. However, a combination of hiking, taking a ski-lift style tram, and then hiking some more, this time on a well-constructed trail across the face of the cliff, brings you to the entrance to the cave.

After we finished our tour of the cave we emerged into the sunlight to see that it was clouding up. As we hiked down to the upper tram station we began to hear some distant thunder. The moist atmosphere became thick, and although it was still mostly sunny in the valley below, many of the distant valleys and ridges were becoming partially obscured. At one point the trail followed the contour of a small gully and looped back away from the cliff edge, affording a view back across this bit of meadow and forest that ended abruptly at the edge of the void where the cliff dropped to the Salzach Valley below.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Forest, Morning

September 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light in the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument

Walking along one of the main trails at Muir Woods, most of the forest was in deep shade. However, up the hillside to my right the morning sun had cleared a nearby ridge and was beginning to cast rays of light into the forest and, especially, to illuminate some of the deciduous trees a bit further up the hill. I had been looking closely at the trunks of big trees along the trail, trying to find compositions in this low light, but the bright light beyond distracted me.

Looking through this group of large, bulky, and mostly straight redwood trunks, I was struck by the difference between their appearance the slender and curving shapes of these further trees – which I think were probably laurels. I also like the slightly disjunct appearance of some of the closer trees, including the one curving from center to the left and the thin tree near the left that is more brightly lit by sun. For the photographers out there, this photograph presented a major exposure problem. As you can imagine, the range between the foreground shadows of the redwood trees and the sunlit trees in the distance was huge. Believe it or not, this photograph was made from a single exposure of the scene.

Photographs: England

London Sunset

August 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Sunset over London, England

We had walked across to the south side of the Thames River earlier on this afternoon – I think it was the day that we visited the Tate Museum, which is located near the south end of the Millennium Bridge. We had been in this area earlier on the trip when we saw “A Midsummer Nights Dream” at the Old Globe Theater, and I had wanted to come back in the evening and try to time it so that I could be along the river during the golden hour and perhaps into the early evening. Sure enough, when we were ready to start out walk back across the bridge to where we would catch the Underground back to our hotel the light was just starting to get interesting. In this case, “interesting” included not only the normal golden hour light show but also the somewhat thick and humid atmosphere found here.

My main thoughts were to photograph the skyline to the north and south of the bridge, and to continue shooting as the evening lights began to come on. But when I saw this sun in the hazy sky I put on a long lens that did what I would do in the Sierra Nevada back home – I made a sunset photograph! However, the landscape in this image is distinctly British and distinctly London, with the most obvious feature being the BT Tower at the left.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: silhouette

Tomales Bay Hills, Morning

Cliff-Edge Forest Above Werfen

Redwood Forest, Morning

London Sunset

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