Tag Archives: surf

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

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

June 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Huge winter surf breaks over rocky coastal islands along California’ Big Sur Coastline.

In mid-January waves of stupendous size came ashore along the California coastline, as they do at times every winter. The surf was caused by storms, but not storms that were at all visible here in California, where this was an unusually warm and sunny weekend, with clear skies and temperatures (in January!) in the low seventy degree range. As I understand it, the source of the large waves was a big Pacific storm far to the north, in the region of the Aleutian Islands, which was sending huge swells thousands of miles toward our coastline.

The news reports were making a big deal of so-called “sneaker waves” – huge waves that seemingly appear unexpectedly and sometimes wash over areas that might seem safe. Sometimes the reports overdo this sort of thing, but the warnings are justified, and this was especially the case during this occurrence. We were even surprised a bit ourselves. When we finally made it to this area along the Big Sur coast that is open to the ocean, we expected to see huge surf, but when we pulled over and looked it didn’t seem like anything all that extraordinary was happening. Yes, there were waves, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. However, as we grabbed gear and tripods and walked to an overlook on a bluff above the water a series of truly huge waves began to come ashore. It turns out that this pattern alternates periods of smaller waves with periodic intervals of much larger waves, and we certainly saw abundant evidence as gigantic waves completely overwhelmed these rocky offshore islands before continuing on to hit the shoreline and wash far up the beaches.

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

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

April 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Pacific Coast Highway winds along the rugged California Big Sur coastline at Bixby Bridge

This is a pretty classic view of the California coastline, including a well-known section of the Pacific Coast Highway (route 1) below Monterey in the northern section of the Big Sur coast. Shot from high on bluffs above the ocean, where the highway climbs to one of its high points, the photograph looks north up the coast across pastureland on the foreground bluff towards the famous Bixby Bridge, located in the surf-filled cove just beyond. More bluffs and ridges dropping to the sea fade into the distant haze beyond that.

This was a beautiful spring day, so I got up very early and was in the Monterey area as the sun came up. The conditions were not quite what I expected. I knew that it was supposed to be windy, so I was expecting very clear conditions. The sky was clear of clouds, but there was quite a bit of low atmospheric haze – it almost looked like it wanted to be fog but couldn’t quite get it together to form clouds. This light does difficult things to colors, but it also creates an interesting contrast between the relatively clear closer objects and further subjects desaturated by the haze. It was also windy – very windy by the time I stopped shooting late in the morning.

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

Surf, Weston Beach

March 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Long exposure photograph of surf and boulders, Weston Beach, Point Lobos State Reserve

This part of a small series of photographs I made at Weston Beach, Point Lobos on a mid-January day. The location is very familiar to me, to the point that I recognize many specific rocks and formations here. I have photographed quite a few times, but I continue to find new things to see here. Part of that is from visiting in different seasons and conditions of weather and light, part from looking more closely, and part from thinking of different ways to photograph the familiar subject. More than once I’ve had a feeling that I was “done” with the location, only to go back and find a new way of seeing it to investigate.

I was playing with several ideas when I made this series of photographs. Obviously, I was working with long exposures that allowed the motion of the waves to blur in various ways, smoothing out the surface of the otherwise-rough water and turning shoreline waves into transparent mist. I was also working with a different sort of light than that which I would usually seek out here. More often I look for soft light, produced by some overcast, an early/late hour, or even fog. But it was very clear on this mid-morning visit and the light falling on the rocks was somewhat stark and harsh, especially when I shot almost into the sunlight. It seemed to me that the edginess of the brightly lit rock might be a counterpoint to the softness of the long-exposure blurring of the water. Obviously, I also went with black and white here. Also, a bit unusual for me, I worked with an ultra-wide angle focal length, getting quite close to the foreground but letting the distant subjects be small and accentuating that by placing the horizon very close to the top of the frame.

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

Little Sur River, Pacific Ocean

January 24, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Little Sur River meets the Pacific ocean along the Big Sur coastline of California in evening light

On this weekend near the middle of January, the local news and weather reports announced the arrival of very large winter surf along the central and northern California coast. This typically happens a few times every winter, when very distant storms far to the north in the Pacific Ocean near the Aleutian Islands send huge swells south towards California. For those whose experience with the California coast has mainly been to experience the usually gentle surf on summer, these waves can be stunning. When I heard about these conditions I knew I had to make it over to the coast. The setup this weekend was special in another way – the period between large waves was rather long and the larger sets of waves were separated by many minutes. We saw this process in action when we first arrived to find what looked like surprisingly calm seas, with only rather normal looking waves. But within minutes a set of the larger waves began to come ashore and we were astounded at their size and power.

This weekend was doubly special. Not only was the monumental winter surf running, but we had a spell of that weather than can make people from other places envy Californians! We went south from Monterey and into the upper reaches of the Big Sur coastline, where it was beautifully sunny and close to 70 degrees! (For those who think this is actually typical… not quite! In the summer this area is often blanketed by thick fog for days on end.) The waves and the weather drew thousands to the shoreline, and I can’t recall the last time I saw so many people along the coast highway. We joined them and made quite a few photographs during the afternoon hours. At the same time I was scoping out possible locations for that final golden-hour photograph. As the end of the day approached we were very close to Big Sur itself, and I remembered stopping at this spot a bit earlier in the day and thinking about how to compose a photograph of the peninsula separating the curving Little Sur River from the steep cliffs and ocean beyond.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: surf

Winter Surf, Big Sur Coast

Bixby Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

Surf, Weston Beach

Little Sur River, Pacific Ocean

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