Tag Archives: stock

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Rat Rock Island, Hills

January 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rat Rock Island and hills of the north San Francisco Bay

This remarkable little island sits just a short distance from the shoreline along the northern San Francisco Bay. Several things contribute to its visual appeal. It is unexpected, in that it is not exactly common to find such islands in this bay. It seems that what formed the island might have been a process similar to one found in coastal areas with much rougher seas, where rocky peninsulas are eventually cut off from the shoreline. The area is very quiet, in contrast to the busy north bay areas you typically might drive through to get here, and the main sounds are those of shore birds. The view beyond the island is expansive – the far side of the bay is distant enough that you the hills are little more than a think break along the horizon, and mostly you see sky and water. The shape of the island is almost but not quite symmetrical, and the little bonsai-like trees on the “summit” echo the curve of the island.

I used a nine-stop neutral density filter so that I could get a relatively long ten second exposure for this photograph. The idea was to let the slight motion of the water blur and create a smooth, glassy quality. (If the clouds had been moving faster, they might also have been blurred. Although it probably isn’t apparent in the photograph, this image is partially the result of quite a bit of work during the post-processing phase.

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: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves

January 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A single-leaf ash in a narrow sandstone-walled canyon begins its autumn transition from green to yellow, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Now, coming back to this photograph quite a while after I made it, I distinctly remember that the gradient from yellow to green of these leaves caught my attention when I saw this small plant growing out of a crack in the water carved sandstone of this canyon wall. I’m often attracted by dark trunks and branches like those on this specimen, especially when they are seen against a background such as this pink sandstone with the patches of darker, lichen-covered rock.

The photograph was made in the same canyon in this national monument where I made a number of other photographs on this same very productive day – productive despite the difficult weather conditions, which were cold, windy, and a bit cloudy. Deep in the canyon and against this canyon wall, the best light is often that from completely clear daytime sky, since that sort of light reflects the best off of the canyon walls and carries with it the warm colors of the rock. Given that this was a tremendously windy day, the lack of leaf blur in this photograph indicates that it was made in a slightly sheltered area of the canyon and, no doubt, by waiting to shoot between the gusts.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Towers and Cliffs

January 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sandstone towers and cliffs in evening light, Capitol Reef National Park

By comparison to some of the other well-known Utah national parks, it seems to me that Capitol Reef is perhaps a bit more difficult to get to know. Oddly, this might be partially because it is so easy to experience it very superficially. A main highway passes right though the park, and a number of the characteristic and iconic features are visible from the highway or by barely leaving it: the well-known orchards, accessible examples of rock art, large and impressive sandstone walls and towers, the Fremont River. Other features are neatly containing along an impressive “scenic drive” with some popular trails. But it seems that the steps to see additional aspects of the park are bigger than at some other parks. For example, while most Yosemite visitors think of The Valley as the park, it isn’t really all that difficult to drive paved roads to Glacier Point, redwood groves, or even the summit of the Sierra. But to go a bit further at Capitol Reef you might have to drive through a river, have four-wheel drive, ask someone about some relatively unknown canyon, drive for many miles on gravel roads.

My first visit to this park was limited to the most accessible features, as we were passing through on our way to another place. We stopped briefly to see the rock art, and I saw those iconic orchards of Fruita. On the second visit, we had more time – we were in the area of several days – and we spent time on the “scenic drive,” did a few of the hikes, and poked around the fringes of these area. We even drove the dozens of miles down that east side gravel road and took a long drive on less-used roads to return to where we started. On a subsequent trip, we asked around a bit, and ended up poking into a canyon where we were the only visitors and walking along a route high in the mountains on a sub-freezing morning. This photograph comes from the intermediate experience of that second trip. Although there was (and still is!) much that I don’t know about this huge and diverse park, by this point I was starting to get a sense of the rhythms of light and so forth, and this enable us to be at this (accessible) location at the right hour as the day came to an end.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Box Elder Thicket, Fall

January 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense thicket of box elder trees along the Escalante River, Utah

Down in the canyons around the Escalante River the terrain varies a great deal. In some areas you might be walking more or less in the stream, perhaps wading up the center of the stream, crossing back and forth across it, rock hopping, and occasionally slogging through very wet sand and mud. In other areas, you might walk through groves of cottonwood or box elder trees of various sizes. Elsewhere you might leave the stream itself and find your way though brush or over and around rocks or slick rock. Sometimes there is abundant vegetation, and in other places you are in a world composed almost entirely of rock.

The river almost continuously twists back and forth and wind around one horseshoe bend after another. These bends seem to me to be important places of transition. On one side you might walk in direct sunlight and be warm. As you pass through the apex of the bend, if you were in the sun you are now likely to pass into shade and the canyon may narrow, perhaps forcing you to cross back and forth across the stream. I found this small clump of box elder trees in such a place. They were quite small – I imagine as a result of growing in an area that could be flooded from time to time – and they grew together densely. It is a challenge to try to make some sort of coherent composition out of such dense and intertwined growth. The interesting side light, reflected from another canyon wall, gave a bit of relief to the thin trunks of the trees, and there are a multitude of relationships to be found among their forms – they are mirror images of one another, or they twist almost in parallel – and in the background is such dense detail that even a very close look at a print shows that there is hardly a place where subjects beyond the trees are visible.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: stock

Rat Rock Island, Hills

Single-Leaf Ash, Green and Yellow Leaves

Sandstone Towers and Cliffs

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