Tag Archives: soft

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

San Francisco, Winter Evening

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San Francisco, Winter Evening - Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.
Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.

San Francisco, Winter Evening. San Francisco, California. January 1, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.

On New Year’s Day 2012, we joined a group of “photo walkers” who were shooting some of the old military structures high in the Marin Headlands area across the Golden Gate and north of San Francisco. After meeting up with all of them and photographing these interesting old sites, we left them as they went off to photograph Rodeo Beach. (We realized that we would need to get back home a bit earlier since my plan was to leave for six days in Death Valley the next morning… and I had not yet packed!)

Since we were already in the area, we took a quick detour up to the Hawk Hill area high on Conzelman Road to check out that famous view across the Golden Gate Bridge toward San Francisco and points beyond. I don’t go here every time I’m in the area, but if I’m already there, it is about to be sunset, I have an extra half hour, and there is the potential for interesting light… what the heck! Once we got there I noticed that some winter haze was distinctly softening the light as the sun was just about to set, and this created a beautiful glowing gradient of colors in the sky and washed the City in pastel light. In this photograph I resisted the temptation to pump things (contrast and saturation) a lot, and intend tried to maintain the subtle coloration of the scene.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Eureka Valley, Twilight

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Eureka Valley, Twilight - Twilight on plants and sand flats in Eureka Valley, Death Valley National Park.
Twilight on plants and sand flats in Eureka Valley, Death Valley National Park.

Eureka Valley, Twilight. Death Valley National Park, California. January 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Twilight on plants and sand flats near the edge of the dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Some might accuse me of being a bit of a contrarian with this photograph, I suppose. I made it at the base of the some very spectacular sand dunes, purportedly the tallest sand dunes in the USA – but I have the dunes to my back and the photograph doesn’t show them at all. This is also an area with very interesting and somewhat dramatic surrounding hills and ridges, but I intentionally cut the upper border of the photograph so as to not include these ridges or the sky. Speaking of the sky, I shot this just after sunset, when sky color is at its peak… but no sky here! And in a time when pumped up, saturated photographs are very common… this one goes with a very different palette, one that includes a lot of tones that are basically tan, along with some bluish color on the far mountains.

I hope that some who know places like this might understand. This is a very desolate place, and I wanted to just accept and try to photograph that. And in the early evening, when the sun has dropped behind the western hills, the blue-tone light comes on and the contrast lowers, and the colors drain from the landscape. In addition, it was cold! For me, the coloration of this scene suggests that aspect of the scene, which is perhaps not what first comes to mind when we see desert sand and plants.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Pre-Dawn Sky, Amargosa Range

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Pre-Dawn Sky, Amargosa Range - Sky above the Amargosa Range in pre-dawn light, Death Valley National Park, photographed from Rhyolite, Nevada.
Sky above the Amargosa Range in pre-dawn light, Death Valley National Park, photographed from Rhyolite, Nevada.

Pre-Dawn Sky, Amargosa Range. Death Valley National Park, California. January 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sky above the Amargosa Range in pre-dawn light, Death Valley National Park.

I usually cannot resist the opportunity to photograph the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada when I’m in Death Valley. I especially like shooting there in the morning. I usually arrive before dawn since the pre-dawn light can create some wonderful effects on the ruins of the town’s buildings, especially if a few thin clouds and the right atmospheric conditions create some interesting light colors. So on this year’s early January trip I devoted one early morning to this subject.

As per my plan, I arrived at Rhyolite a few minutes before the good light started – it was very cold and no one else was there. In fact, I had the place to myself for the first half hour or so of my photography. I never know exactly what to expect when it comes to the dawn light. If things work out just right, and especially a bit later in the year, thin pre-dawn clouds will light up and color the light on the old town. That didn’t happen on this morning. First, I discovered that in the heart of winter, when the sun comes up a bit further south, a mountain right next to the town blocks the first light and it doesn’t strike the best ruins (such as the school and Cook Bank) until a bit later. In addition, on this morning clouds above the horizon blocked the light just a bit more than I would have liked. However… to the west and over the Amargosa Range things were rapidly becoming a lot more investing. This range was open to the light from the pre-dawn sky in the east, and high thin clouds began to pick up that colorful light that I had hoped might appear over the town. I put a long lens on the camera, moved to a position where I could get a fairly unobstructed view to the west, and made a series of exposures of this simple composition that allowed me to include a large section of the colorful sky.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks

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Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks
Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks

Small Tree, Shoreline Rocks. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small tree grows in a shoreline rock garden along a Sierra Nevada lake in the back-country of Yosemite National Park.

I’m posting this one because a person who posted here a week or two ago on a similar photograph asked whether I had made any photographs that included a bit more of the surface of the lake and its reflections of the forest in the distance. In fact, I had one more, and this is it.

I made this photograph and the other one in soft light at the edge of the day when no direct sunlight was in the scene at all. While this can flatten the light a bit, it also tends to fill in that shadow areas and create a less harsh sort of light. In also contributed to the interesting reflected and diffused forms of the forest along the far bank of the lake, whose vertical forms cross the horizontal forms of underwater rocks along the bottom of the lake bed.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.