Tag Archives: sur

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

Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point

2 Comments
Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point - Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California
Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California

Big Sur Coast at Soberanes Point. Big Sur, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening fog comes in as the rugged Big Sur coast stretches north from near Soberanes Point, California.

Talk about photographic geekiness – we ended up making photographs on my birthday! Because of a variety of factors, this turned out to be a bit of a low key birthday this year – despite some earlier plans to do all sorts of wild and crazy things. (Completing the JMT or going to Alaska will perhaps wait a bit… ;-) After a quiet and lazy morning we decided to head down to the Monterey area for a birthday dinner, which turned out to be quite nice by the way. (Thanks, Patty!)

Since we arrived a few hours before our dinner reservation. After stalling around a bit, thinking about this and that option, we decided to do the usual, obvious thing and head south on the Highway 1, the “coast highway,” into the upper portion of the Big Sur coastline area. While it is a very familiar area and one I visit a lot, it is never the same twice – all of the variables of light and atmosphere and season and weather are in play and you almost never know quite what you’ll find. On this early evening, the most important factor was that the edge of the ocean fog was positioned very close to the shore. This meant that sometimes it extended just a bit inland, creating light that ranged from slightly luminous to gray and murky, while in other areas it was just offshore, allowing light to hit the coast and even to light the surface of the ocean a bit. Here at the cove where the creek comes down Soberanes Canyon to meet the ocean, we found one of those boundaries – quite gray along the immediate coast in the distance, sunlight on the bluffs and hills at the right, and that wonderful boundary light in between. And above that, the barely perceptible difference between the soft clouds of fog and the light blue of the late-day sky.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur

Leave a comment
Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur - Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.
Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Evening Fog and Rocks, Big Sur. Big Sur Coastline, California. August 13, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Muted light on the surface of the Pacific Ocean and rocks along the Big Sur coastline as evening fog moves in.

Having a couple of free hours late in the day, we ended up driving down the upper section of the Big Sur coastline below Monterey, to the area around the Rocky Creek and Bixby Bridges. (Though we stopped a bit short of the latter.) The light was alternately gray and murky, soft and misty, and sharp and bright – the fog was lurking near the coast, and depending upon which bend we drove around it covered the coast highway and the inland hills or it ended just off the coast.

This kind of coastal light creates some of the most transitory and ephemeral effects of all the subjects I shoot, similar perhaps to shooting the clouds of a dissipating winter storm among the aretes and spires of Sierra peaks. The variables in play are numerous: the point of the fog line off the shore or inland, whether or not the fog is thin enough to allow a bit of light so shine directly through, the appearing and disappearing pools of offshore light where the clouds thin, and the motion of the sea itself. Often I’ll spot what looks like absolutely gorgeous light, stop, grab gear and set up… and then look up to see that it is gone. Or that it is appearing in some other location where there was nothing a moment ago.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Commentary, Ideas

A Photograph Exposed: Photography and Luck

15 Comments

(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail.)

I have never been shy about admitting the role that luck plays in producing effective photographs, especially photographs of the natural world. Vision and knowledge and experience and planning and all the rest are important, but we kid ourselves if we imagine that we are in control of our subjects to any great degree. The topic came up in a recent discussion, so I thought I’d share an edited version of my response here.

I can tell you with certainty that luck plays at least some role in many, if not the majority, of my landscape photographs. It is not the only thing, and preparation of all sorts is critical, but in the end almost every photograph depends on conditions and circumstances that are largely beyond my control. I’ve written quite often at my blog about the sudden unanticipated appearance of magical light or atmosphere, snap decisions to be here instead of there, showing up in a place to find the key element that I could not have predicted, and random decisions that led (or not!) to special photographs.

The following photograph is one of my favorite illustrations, though I could use scores of others to make the same point.

Fisherman, Winter Surf - Big Sur fisherman casts into the roiling winter Pacific Ocean surf.
Fisherman, Winter Surf

(To make the story even wilder, I ended up with three images of this scene, and I still have a hard time selecting a favorite.)

So, how did this photograph come about? It sure looks like it must have taken some planning to get that individual fisherman posed in front of the stupendous winter surf, right? Or else some serious Photoshop trickery ? No, on both counts.

One morning I decided to photograph at Point Lobos along the Central California coast – a bit less than an hour and a half from where I live. Why Point Lobos on that day? It is hard to say for sure since even though I knew that high surf was possible, I could have gone to many other coastal locations to find it. It is a place I photograph often, but so are at least a score of other locations within the same radius of my home. So, for no clear reason that I can articulate, other than it is one of the places I like to shoot, I headed that direction.

I got there  too early, and the park was still closed. I pulled up to the entrance, joining the short line of cars waiting for the gate to open, and figured I’d wait. As I sat there, I realized that I might as well drive around and see what else I could find while waiting. So I started the car, made a u-turn, and returned to highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. Should I go left (north) or right (south)? No idea. Oh, what the heck, I guess I’ll go south. (Less traffic to worry about when turning right onto the highway…)

Continue reading A Photograph Exposed: Photography and Luck →
Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Pelican Flock

Leave a comment

Pelican Flock - A high key rendering of a photograph of a flock of pelicans above the Point Lobos State Reserve
A high key rendering of a photograph of a flock of pelicans above the Point Lobos State Reserve

Pelican Flock. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. July 16, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A high key rendering of a photograph of a flock of pelicans above the Point Lobos State Reserve.

I photograph birds sometimes – more these days than at some times in the past – but they are generally not my main passion in photography, with a few exceptions. The first of those, however, is photographing pelicans along the Pacific Ocean coast of California where these big, magnificent birds seem to stand apart from the other birds of the area. They are bigger, they often coast rather than flapping wings quickly, when seen they are most often simply passing by on their way to and from some unknown other place, and they overall seem to me to have an almost prehistoric aspect.

Most often when I photograph them I go to some place where I think they will pass and I wait. Places where a rocky peninsula extends a bit into the ocean can be likely spots, as are the top edges of certain bluffs above cliffs, where they seem to float past on updrafts from onshore winds. Often as I wait and watch for them I see other birds and I may photograph them, but I’m always watching in the further distance for the groups of pelicans, usually strung out in lines of a few birds to, sometimes, many – and as soon as I spot them the other birds are forgotten as I watch the pelicans approach. I understand that this year the California pelicans are stressed by some sort of environmental change and many have died and others seem undernourished. This may partly explain why I saw so few on this July visit to Point Lobos, mostly only stray groups of two or three that were separated widely from one another. But late in the day a huge flock came from the south and, surprisingly, rather than floating past quickly they moved slightly inland, where I think they found a thermal, and spent several minutes coasting in circles as they rose higher.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.