Tag Archives: sunset

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

Sunset Bluffs, Pacific Coast

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Sunset Bluffs, Pacific Coast
Late-autumn sunset light on California coastal bluffs south of San Francisco.

Sunset Bluffs, Pacific Coast. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late-autumn sunset light on California coastal bluffs south of San Francisco.

My recollection of this photograph is that I had gone to the coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz on this late-autumn evening partially because I had heard that people I knew were meeting up there to photograph and get together for dinner at an area restaurant. If I recall correctly, things did not go quite as planned. I think I ended up in the wrong restaurant and didn’t find these folks, and eventually I wandered off to some nearby bluffs by myself — which actually suits me fine when I’m making photographs, too.

It was a late afternoon and evening of interesting conditions, the sort that may produce something very special but which are more likely, perhaps, to be a complete bust. There was overcast and some haze in the air, and the light in afternoon was not really spectacular — it was a bit flat and the overcast made it more dull as sunset approached. However, there was the potential for something interesting. The cloud bank that stretched away from the coast seemed to terminate offshore, and there was a gap between this edge and the horizon. If that remained, I knew that there might be a brief moment of spectacular light coming through this gap just before the sud dropped below the horizon. If the band of light is narrow the colors can be intense in its beam while remaining darker and far less intense elsewhere. As you can see, that is precisely what happened.

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees, Ridge, Sunset Clouds

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Trees, Ridge, Sunset Clouds
Weathered trees on a rocky ridge beneath sunset clouds, Yosemite National Park.

Trees, Ridge, Sunset Clouds. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Weathered trees on a rocky ridge beneath sunset clouds, Yosemite National Park.

Today I’ll take a brief intermission between the ongoing stream of the photographs from Utah that I have been finding in the raw file archive… and take a brief side trip back to the Yosemite National Park high country, a place that I’m missing right now. I could get up there — and I hope to in the next month or two — but the logistics are quite complicated at the moment.

This photograph comes from a day of weather a bit like what we’re experiencing in Northern California today — humid, thunderstorm weather. I made the photograph late in the day as the last light glowed pink on dissipating clouds above a ridge with stubborn old trees living on a very rocky ridge.

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

Aspen Groves, Evening

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Aspen Groves, Evening
Autumn aspen groves at dusk on Boulder Mountain.

Aspen Groves, Evening. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn aspen groves at dusk on Boulder Mountain.

With this photograph, I believe I’m coming to the end of the images that came from this October passage along Boulder Mountain back in 2012. It was the second time I visited this area, and like the first visit it was merely a drive through between two other locations. Unlike the first visit, which was in the springtime, I timed this one to coincide with fall colors. (As it turned out, I mis-estimated the date a bit and we arrived for the very tail-end of the colors. ) Like the other photographs of this autumn subject, it was made as the day came to an end.

The distant sky and clouds bring up a subject that always interests me. I’ve lived almost my entire life near the western edge of the North American continent, in a place where the ocean is little more than a half hour away and where the daily weather is affected by it. I’m always aware of this presence. And when I travel I’m equally aware of its absence. Often when I’m in places like the one in this photograph I look west at the end of the day — as this photograph does — and as I ponder how much land lies between me and the ocean I feel its absence.

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

Dusk, From Boulder Mountain

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Dusk, From Boulder Mountain
A distant peak in sunset light beyond autumn aspens in the Boulder Mountain area.

Dusk, From Boulder Mountain. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A distant peak in sunset light beyond autumn aspens in the Boulder Mountain area.

This photograph marks a step in my process of learning about the remarkable landscape of southern Utah. I’ve written previous about how I managed to miss photographing Utah for a long time — it is a long story having to do with Sierra obsessions and family travels though less visually stimulating portions of Utah when I was very young. My first real photographic visit was in the early 2000s in the springtime… and I was taken by this landscape. On our way across the state we passed through the Boulder Mountain area, and I made a mental note to try to revisit this area’s extensive aspen groves in the fall.

A few years later we went back in autumn, on a long trip that started in the Eastern Sierra, crossed empty areas of Nevada, and arrived in Southeast Utah… where I discovered that fall colors arrive earlier there than in the Sierra. When we eventually worked our way across Boulder Mountain it was clear that we were catching the tail end of the aspen colors, and many groves were already bare. At dusk we found a location where lines of still-colorful trees alternated with bare trunks. Among the photographs I made was this one, looking toward the last light on the Capitol Reef area and higher mountains beyond.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.