Tag Archives: sun

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

Shoreline, Abandoned Dock, Morning

June 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An abandoned dock stands along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay in morning light

Things have been very busy recently, limiting my time to go out and shoot. For some time I’ve been looking forward to another of my periodic “personal photo walks” in San Francisco, and I finally had the chance today. My routine is to get up very early and catch a Caltrain to the City, arriving there no later than 7:00 AM. This is a bit before the crowds arrive, and early enough that there is still a lot of good light around. The good light is especially likely long the San Francisco Bay waterfront, where it shine toward the City from across the bay, often through mist or fog and always reflecting on the water.

This time I explored around the fringes of the Mission Bay area. This was formerly a pretty run down location, with lots of empty lots and some abandoned structures. However, recent urban development has come, and many of the formerly empty areas are now construction sites or the sites of very new and recently occupied buildings. I walked past these and looped over towards the waterfront, where some areas are surprisingly “unimproved,” at least so far. Here I found the remnants of several old piers that have been left to decay and gradually tumble into the bay. In this photograph I shot straight into the morning sun, silhouetting the rotting wood, and composing the scene to include a bit of a working pier to the left and a couple of tankers anchored out in the bay beneath the thinning fog bank.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Wetland Sunrise, Fog

March 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter sun rises through high clouds above foggy wetland landscape, San Joaquin Valley

I photographed this Central Valley sunrise on a cold and damp mid-February morning earlier this year. I had travelled out here to photograph birds, but that is always a bit of an excuse to photograph landscapes, too. The San Joaquin Valley, especially on winter days when varying amounts of fog come into play, can be a beautiful place to make photographs—which may surprise people who mostly think of it as the location of California’s agribusinesses and a place to drive through quickly on hot summer days.

Many things come together in a place like this at a time like this. High, thin clouds were spread over the Sierra Nevada far to the east, and the sun had to rise above them before it appeared out here in the valley. (The sun had earlier colored the landscape as it struck high clouds over the valley, but it was not visible yet itself.) Many of the birds here only visit in the winter, arriving from and then departing for places far north of here. The marshes in this area mark the location of the San Joaquin River drainage, though today there is almost nothing left of the original water flow. And on a morning like this the experience is only partially visual. The air is cold, damp, and still, yet filled with the astonishing and raucous sounds of tens of thousands of birds.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Two Cranes, Sunrise

February 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Two cranes fly in front the rising sun above San Joaquin Valley wetlands

On New Years Eve 2013 I arrived back in the San Francisco Bay Area from New York after 10:00 PM. 8 hours later (2 hours of unpacking, four hours of sleep, and two hours of driving) I was in the Central Valley, where I met friends to greet the (literal) dawn of 2014 in the company of wild birds. We arrived before sunrise to find light fog drifting about and to hear the sounds of thousands of birds coming from every direction.

We made a few initial photographs before dawn from very close to our meeting location, and then we headed out into this wildlife area to find locations from which the birds (geese, cranes, herons, pelicans, and more) would be more visible. A few minutes later I looked over my left shoulder to see the very first sliver of the sun barely glowing through the layers of fog as cranes and other birds flew across the horizon above the marshland. I quickly found this spot where there was a small tree and where a bit of the further water was visible and I photographed though the sunrise, until the sun rose above the low mist and became to bright to include in the frame. There was a constant flow of birds across the scene – sometimes hundreds of them and sometimes, as in this scene, only a few.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Marsh, Fog, Sunrise

February 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Dawn sun reflected in the surface of a foggy San Joaquin Valley marsh

On a foggy morning like this one, when the fog is dense but not deep, the atmosphere and light can pass through an astounding series of phases in short order as the day begins. We arrived before sunrise, when it was still almost dark, and when we began to think photographically a few minutes later there was little light in the sky at all. The overall toned were mostly blue, and it was difficult to see any detail. Very soon, as the first real pre-dawn light began to illuminate clouds above the eastern horizon and turn them shades of red and pink, the shallow fog layer began to glow with these reflected colors. We had perhaps five minutes of this luminous color, which at times was almost unbelievably saturated, and then the intensity began to fade and the colors became more subtle. At the same time, the brighter sky overhead became more visible through the fog, and we could begin to more clearly see the higher clouds.

The sun was still below the horizon, even though its light was beginning to strike those higher clouds to the east. At about this time we moved on to a different location with a clearer view directly to the east. Very soon the rising sun began to emerge above the distant Sierra and low clouds, and from our position it rose into a slight clearing in these clouds. The orb of the sun became visible through the dense atmosphere and its direct light soon began to reflect off the surface of the wetland pond in front of us. Shooting straight into the rising sun, I closed down aperture and shortened exposure and made this photograph that, to me, captures the depth of the scene as it moves from the nearby reflections and ripples in the water, across a further line of half-submerged grasses, towards a larger expanse of the pond and then further landscape in fog, to finally rise though slightly glowing back-lit fog toward the sky and the sun.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sun

Shoreline, Abandoned Dock, Morning

Wetland Sunrise, Fog

Two Cranes, Sunrise

Marsh, Fog, Sunrise

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