Winter dusk light and clouds over the Pacific Ocean at Carmel Highlands near Yankee Point, Pacific Coast Highway, California.
This is the companion image to the black and white photograph I posted yesterday, Before I made the exposures that I used to create that black and white landscape-orientation image, I first made a quick series of bracketed exposures in portrait mode. As I photographed, I knew that the dynamic range was going to be too large for a singe exposure so I quickly made a series of four exposures, from which I selected two that have blended to produce this image.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
A Carmel Highlands cypress trees stands at the edge of a cliff above the Pacific Ocean and Yankee Point at dusk.
Oddly, this is a photograph that sort of “didn’t make the cut” the first time I went through the batch shortly after making the photographs in early 2010. I had spent the afternoon photographing further south in the Big Sur area and several other photographs from the set turned out more as I expected – and this one seemed like a sort of problem child photograph, so I didn’t take the time needed to work with it. Eventually I forgot about it as I went on to other projects.
The photo had been almost a bit of a grab shot. As I was heading north back up the coast, thinking I had finished my shooting and was now on the way home, I was stunned to catch a glimpse of some intense post-sunset light as I rounded the bend at the head of this cove in Carmel Highlands. I wasn’t certain that I could find a composition and work out a photograph in the brief interval the probably remained before the light faded, but I quickly put on the wide angle zoom, attached the camera to the tripod, and headed over to the edge of the bluff. Exposure was a terrible problem because the brilliant and very colorful sky was quite bright, while the close side of the foreground tree was nearly black. I made managed to shoot the scene a few times, shifting from landscape to portrait mode and making three bracketed exposures of each composition.
When I got home and looked at the raw files I think I decided that it was just going to be too much work for too little reward, and I instead went to work on more promising shots from earlier in the afternoon. This week I came upon the series of shots again and wondered what I could do with them. My first inclination was to go with the color, and I did come up with a portrait orientation image in color that I will probably post before long. Then, as I began to work on the landscape mode image, I started to see it as having potential as a monochrome image. I tried it. I liked it. And here it is!
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Black and white photograph of two people standing on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean and overlooking a cove and beach near Davenport California.
Although I have continued posting photographs at a rate of one per day, I have only managed to get into the field to shoot a few times since early November. Yesterday I found time to make it over to the Pacific coast late in the day. I was looking for the foggy, misty, and somewhat gray conditions that are common this time of year, at least when the air has not been cleared by a passing storm. I wasn’t disappointed. While the sky was clear overhead, the air was very moist – my equipment became damp from condensation as I worked.
Since my time was a bit limited – the sun was going down! – I went more or less straight to this spot where I have photographed in the past. (At first I considered going a bit further north to shoot from high bluffs, but I realized that the shot I had in mind from that location would be better earlier in the day.) When I arrived the sun was just dropping below the horizon, but that is what I wanted – I wasn’t looking for one of those brilliant “sun dead ahead” shots. I wanted the post-sunset soft light and enough darkness that I could work with longer exposures.
I parked and walked the short distance to this spot at the head of this cove. The composition is sort of tricky. The “right” (in my view) arrangement of the offshore rock and the surrounding bluffs can only be seen from a very small area – too far right or left and elements start to collide. In addition I wanted that little bit of more distant shoal along the right side of the frame to suggest that the coast continues, and I wanted that flat bit of bluff with a bit of post sunset light at the left. It was a bonus when the two people – probably photographers! – showed up on the top of the left bluff and thoughtfully posed for me as I made long exposures!
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Morning clouds fill the sky above the Manifold at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.
I posted a monochrome version of this photograph yesterday, so there is perhaps a bit less to say about it in this post. To recap briefly, this is a photograph I made over three years ago during a spring visit to Death Valley NPS. This was a bit of a different morning for photographing at Zabriskie Point, if I recall correctly. Usually, photographing here is pretty straightforward – and once you’ve shot it a couple times in “normal” conditions, there is a basic pattern to the progression of light that becomes fairly (though perhaps not totally) clear. Normal conditions here basically mean perfectly clear skies with the sun coming up to the left from the perspective of this photograph or behind in some of the other familiar shots that include Manley Beacon – and light that sequentially illuminates subjects beginning with the highest peaks of the Panamint Range across the Valley and gradually working down into the Valley and finally to the rugged shapes at Zabriskie Point itself.
But clouds can change everything. If I am going to shoot at Zabriskie, I watch for conditions that will bring them. I will generally not stop there if it is “another beautiful clear sunrise” at Zabriskie. (If you haven’t been there before, you should stop and take in this stunning scene, but I’m often looking for something a bit different.) While the results in clear conditions are relatively predictable, they are not at all as predictable when there are clouds. You can end up with something very special… or with a drab, flat, and gray scene. But that’s the thing about special conditions – they wouldn’t be special if they were predictable and frequent!
Thinking back to this morning, my recollection is that it may have been one of those when I arrived to think, “Oh, boy, clouds!” – only to think a bit later, “I wish those clouds would move and give me some light!” I recall some bits of dawn light that were mostly blocked by the clouds. But the very clouds that blocked the hoped-for first dawn light thoughtfully assembled themselves into these impressive forms just a bit later, at right about the time that the warm side-light was getting down into the rugged folds of the Manifold and Gower Wash.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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