Tag Archives: stock

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Gull, Sky, and Fog

July 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A solitary gull flies above California’s Pacific Ocean coastline with a fog bank and blue sky beyond.

With some free time earlier this week, and the excuse of driving my son to a summer-session class at UC-Santa Cruz, I headed north from Santa Cruz looking for things to photograph. Because there was a lot of fog, even in the middle of the day, fog was one of my general subject ideas. And I almost always make at least a quick stop at a couple of bluff-top locations that I know of where shore birds often glide by very close as they ride the updrafts from the ocean winds. It turned out that my first stop was precisely one of these locations. With nothing else specific in mind at this midday hour, I figured I would at least spend a bit of time honing my skills and tracking and photographing birds in flight.

Although sea gulls are not necessarily my favorite subjects, there sure were plenty of them to practice on! At the spot I picked, they first become visible perhaps 10-15 seconds away as they come around the edge of a bluff to the south. As they approach they tend to vary their altitudes, with some dropping low enough that they disappear behind the cliff and others going so high that only their shaded undersides are visible. But a few come very close at almost eye level.

I almost always learn something new when I photograph birds in flight and this session was no exception. While in retrospect it seems like one of those “Well, duh!” realizations, I figured out that really strong winds tend to upset the birds ability to remain level, and for this reason they are constantly adjusting to remain level. From moment to moment the wings move into interesting positions or they find themselves tilting wildly to get back on course. This is much more interesting than what they do in benign conditions, where they often seem to just… coast.

So, add one more thing to watch for as they fly past. This isn’t an easy thing, and I have the greatest admiration for those who are really great at photographing birds in flight – or “BIF,” as some call them. The first challenge is simply to keep the moving birds in the viewfinder when using a long focal length lens. (I advise practicing the process of simply following the birds without even firing the shutter at first.) But that’s not enough. You must also attempt to keep the bird(s) in a position within the frame that is aesthetically interesting and which will position the target under the active AF points on the camera. Easier said than done! Then there is the matter of trying also be aware of what the bird is doing – watching wing and head position and so forth. On top of that, you ideally also want to be aware of the what else is in the frame – sky, clouds, water, other birds – and factor that into the decision about when to press the shutter. There are exposure challenges, too, especially with birds like this gull that have white on their backs… and this portion of the bird is in direct sun.

Let’s just say that – for me at least – it takes a lot of exposures to get a few shots that I like.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Parking Lot Near Pier 48, Morning

July 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Morning light on a large parking lot near Pier 48, San Francisco.

Continuing with the “urban landscape” theme, this is a photograph of a parking lot south of the bridge next to ATT Park and near the buildings of Pier 48 in San Francisco. After getting off the train that arrived in San Francisco at 7:00 a.m. and wandering over to Townsend Street, I decided to cross the what I think must be the Mission Bay inlet and take a look through this area which was rather deserted at this early hour. (Come back here before a Giants game, and the parking lot will be completely full of the cars of people who are willing to spend exorbitant amounts to park here.)

While there were cars in other portions of this parking lot that are closer to likely destinations, at this far end there was a single lonely car, and that seemed like it could be an anchor for a photograph of the lot, the tall streetlight poles, the industrial-looking buildings of Pier 48 and other assorted waterfront things. Because it was so early, the sun rising across the bay was filling the air with brilliant light that created a sky that was more white than blue.

In addition to the obvious crop, this image required other kinds of substantial work in post. The first issue was controlling the very brightest parts of the sky and a second was the follow-up need to then lighten a few other areas to get some detail back into the image. Color balance was a tricky thing – this isn’t that far from what the raw file contained, though I did warm the colors just a bit. I also did something in this image that I rarely do, namely use semi-opaque blurred and desaturated overlay layer of the original image to do, well, some stuff that is a bit hard to describe in written form. Suffice it to say that this had an effect on the parking lot and on the brightness of the sky.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Pier, San Francisco Waterfront, Morning

July 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An old pier along the San Francisco Bay waterfront, morning light.

When I take the train to San Francisco early on summer mornings, it is frequently the case that the sun is out as I walk along the Embarcadero waterfront, and the light greats a bright glowing atmosphere as the haze and light fog above the bay are backlit. It can be almost too bright to look at. Often the buildings of the east bay and the cranes of the Port of Oakland are faintly visible on the horizon, as they are in this photograph. There is actually a range of east bay mountains above these structures, but they are not quite visible through the glowing atmosphere in this photograph.

The Embarcadero, the road that runs along the waterfront of the bay on the east side of The City, is lined with many old piers. They range from those that have been restored and turned into tourist areas (think of Pier 39 with its souvenir shops), others that house businesses and even a museum or two, some that are primarily parking areas, and a few others that have been left to rot in the sun. In some ways, those in the latter group are the most interesting to photograph, though there are fewer of them now that the value of this waterfront real estate has once again been recognized. Originally, this was a working port with passenger and freight ships. Now most of that business has gone across the bay to Oakland. However, today the bay front properties are probably more valuable for other purposes anyway.

I have photographed this particular pier before, but this time I liked the very bright sky, barely visible structures across the bay, and the morning light that is just hitting the left side of the buildings on the pier.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Rocky Shoreline, Lower Young Lake

July 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Morning light shines through the forest on the rocky shoreline of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park.

The three Young Lakes are among my favorite places in the Yosemite back-country, and I visit them pretty much every summer. As I did when I made this photograph, I most often to in the last season – I like to visit after Labor Day weekend, when the crowds begin to diminish, the weather is a bit cooler, fall colors begin, and everything in the Sierra seems to slow down in anticipation of the coming winter.

On this visit I camped for something like three nights at the lower lake, and thus had time to photograph throughout the basin at different times of day. On this morning I got up early as I usually do, and spent a good part of the morning photographing along the shoreline of this lake, starting in the area near where most people camp and where the trail passes along the shoreline. A bit later I crossed the outlet stream and followed the rocky shoreline around to the far shore where the forest opens into rocky meadows near the main inlet stream.

In the photograph, the early light is coming from behind the trees in the shoreline forest and glancing off the tops of the boulders on the shore and in the shallow water. There were two photographic challenges in making this photograph. First, the dynamic range between the brightest sunlit spots on the rocks and the darker areas in the forest is extreme. In some cases I might resort to blending multiple exposures as a way to deal with this issue, but here I was able to recover enough detail from a single frame. The second issue relates to the color of the light. Specifically, while the sunlit areas have a fairly warm quality, the light in the shadows on the rocks and in the shaded areas of the forest turns out to be distinctly blue in a photograph. In fact, these areas end up looking much more blue than you would think if you were there – this has to do with the way our minds process what we see to make it more like what we think it should be… if that makes any sense. In any case, the decisions here ended up being about how much blue would be the right amount.

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