Tag Archives: stones

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

The White Rock

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The White Rock
A solitary white rock, wedged into a gap coastal strata near the tide line.

The White Rock. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A solitary white rock, wedged into a gap between coastal strata near the tide line.

These little Pacific Ocean shoreline scenes fascinate me when I slow down and spend time taking in their details. It is easy to focus on the big landscape and miss them, but they often reward slow, eyes-open wandering with plenty of surprises — colorful rocks, bits of shells, occasional sea critters, and more.

There’s a lot going on in this little scene — more than I can fully understand, much less explain. The underlying rock is stratified and upended, so that the lines of contrasting colors run along the surface, in places carved into curving shapes by the sea. That pile of small rocks in the lower half of the frame includes a remarkable variety of rocks and a few bits of shells and other things washed up from the sea. The rocks are wet, indicating just how close to the waterline I was working. As near as I could tell, the big white rock was the only one like it in this spot, leaving me a bit mystified about its source.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

At the Wrack Line

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At the Wrack Line
Material washed up by the tide at Weston Beach, Point Lobos

At the Wrack Line. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Material washed up by the Pacific Coast tide.

It had been too long since my last visit to the coast. The Pacific Ocean is barely more than a half hour away, and the Big Sur coast is only about twice that far. This coast has been part of my life since my parents took our family there when I was a child. When traveling, two things make me nervous – being too far from mountains and being too far from the coast. So this morning, after too long of an interval, I headed over there and ended up at Point Lobos.

Much to my surprise, my first stop was at the place known as Weston Beach. (It always feels like it should be called Weston Cove, but I digress.) As I began photographing I felt a bit like perhaps I was revisiting a place that has been done, and overdone, and overdone again. But I have a personal connection to this little cove and its rocks and pebbles, and I ended up enjoying a rather long period of slowly poking around, checking out rocks, looking for stuff washed up on the shore. (About that title: I had to look up what to call this stuff, and I learned that the closet thing to an official term for natural things washed up on the beach is “wrack.”)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Evening Stroll, Montmartre

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Evening Stroll, Montmartre
People walking in the evening along narrow streets of Montmartre, Paris

Evening Stroll, Montmartre. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

People walking in the evening along narrow streets of Montmartre, Paris

This is another photograph from our 2016 European trip, on which we spent about a week in Paris. It was, I’m almost embarrassed to admit, our very first visit to the city. (It is a long story. But at least we did finally go. And we’ll go back again!) We loved everything about our stay there. When we travel to such places we spend a lot of time walking — to and from locations we want to visit, wandering around once we get there, and exploring neighborhoods near our accommodations or which happen to catch our attention.

I made this photograph “in the neighborhood” near our hotel in Montmartre. My recollection is that we had headed out looking for a place to eat dinner — something of a daily adventure — and were walking around during the sunset and evening hours. This is a great time for street photography, since the lights of businesses have come on, yet the ambient light from fading daylight is still bright enough to illuminate the scene.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

A Story in Red Rock

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A Story in Red Rock
A Story in Red Rock

A Story in Red Rock. Utah. October 23, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Broken rocks spread across a layer of sandstone in evening light

This is another photograph from my first evening on this trip in this particular part of Utah, from a day when I had met up with friends and traveled out to find a campsite where we would stay for the next few days — our base camp for exploring red rock and canyons and for sharing meals and conversation. After setting up camp and settling in, we headed out for our first evening of photography, and would up in a nearby landscape of sculpted sandstone.

We began shooting mostly together, finding and exploring some obvious and quite impressive subjects — each working on his or her own photographs but staying mostly in a group. Eventually we began to split up and wander off to do our own individual exploration. Later in the evening I ended up in an area of massive sandstone benches and ridges and potholes, and as the dusk came on and the light turned red/burgundy I was above a small sandstone canyon descending toward the sagebrush country below. This is a simple scene, but I like to think about a few secrets that it may reveal. It is easy to see such landscapes as being static, but the fact is that they are always changing, though mostly on a time scale that is much longer than that of our lives. But occasionally there are obvious clues, and here the clearest is the scattering of fractured rock that has failed from the seemingly solid face in the upper part of the scene, a hint about how it came to be that the lower flat surface runs into the upper wall.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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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