Evening cloud forms above the Pacific Ocean coastline near Davenport, California.
This is the second of a pair of abstract images of evening clouds that I photographed earlier this week along the California coastline north of Davenport. The photographs were shot with fairly long focal lengths and then converted to black and white in post, where additional modifications to the original images were also made.
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.
Evening cloud forms above the Pacific Ocean coastline near Davenport, California.
This is the first of a pair of abstract images of evening clouds that I photographed earlier this week along the California coastline north of Davenport.
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.
Fog rolls in on a summer evening at Scott Creek Beach, on the Pacific Ocean coastline near Davenport, California.
I’m fortunate to live close enough to the California coastline that I can occasionally just decide on the spur of the moment to “drive over the hill” and step out of the world of work to watch the sunset over the Pacific. This is what I decided to do yesterday. I drove over that hill with only a vague plan to see what conditions looked like and then most likely head north from Santa Cruz toward and perhaps beyond Davenport.
I almost never know exactly what I’ll find on the coast until I get there. Yesterday I had suspicions about the possibility of fog, but I also thought that clear sky might linger a while before the fog rolled in. For the most part it turned out that there was fog but that in most places it was a good distance offshore though starting to form in closer. However, it also turned out that there was a good amount of high cloudiness blocking the sunlight. In other words, the prospects were mixed – might be interesting light at the last minute, fog might roll in and cover everything, the clouds might thicken instead of thin. So I continued with no specific images in mind, driving past various familiar locations. As I descended toward Scott Creek Beach I caught a quick glimpse of a panorama across the beach that seemed like it might work as a wide angle shot, so I quickly turned around and returned to the spot. Once I got set up I realized that while it was a beautiful scene it wasn’t going to work as a photograph. But this scene, which required a longer focal length, caught my attention instead.
Shadows from light fall across a parking lot wall.
A photograph made on a walk with a body and a 50mm lens and not much else – a walk from my home. This wall has often intrigued me, as have these small lamps up near the roof line. On this day I was out in the “terrible light” time of the day – midday, when shadows are almost as close to vertical as they get around here. Not only was I attracted to the interesting slight diagonals of the long shadows, but also to the colors of weathered green paint, deep blue sky, and the messy textures of the parking lot.
