Tag Archives: trail

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

Coal Chute Point and The Pit

April 2, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Coal Chute Point, the Pit, and the rugged shoreline of Point Lobos State Reserve, California.

(Shortly after posting this, another photographer wrote to suggest that I might consider renaming the image to “Point and Chute.” ;-)

For all the years – decades, actually, and more than a few – that I’ve been visiting Point Lobos, there are still places that I have not gotten around to visiting within the boundaries of the park. Among them are some headlands not far from Whalers Cove that I’ve looked at for a long time… and then always headed off to some other part of the reserve without visiting them. Earlier this week I visited Point Lobos with no particular goal in mind aside from making some photographs, and I somehow finally ended up in this picturesque area that offers some quite different views from those found in the areas that more directly face out into the Pacific. (While it is, indeed, picturesque… the place names are not. Coal Chute Point? The Pit?)

The light in this photograph is somewhat subdued, at least in comparison to some of the photographs you might see of such a place, typically shot in the evening when the sky is at its most colorful. (Yes, I’ve certainly made my share of those photographs at Point Lobos, too!) But this light had a different sort of appeal, and it continuously changed during my half day there. When I arrived some fog was just clearing near the coast. It was a strange pattern – fog way inlands that looked more like the typical winter valley tule fog than the summer coastal fog. In fact, as is frequently the case in winter, it was clear at the coast. But somewhat surprisingly there was a regular old fog bank lurking a ways off the shoreline – and later in the day it moved in on the coast. Along with this there were high, thin clouds from a weather front that was passing well to the north. These conditions can still provide directional light but light which is softer and can fill in the shadows a bit – making it possible to shoot in places and at times of the day when the light might otherwise be too harsh. For this photograph I decided to “go wide,” and shoot with a 24mm focal length of a full frame DSLR to accentuate the distance between the foreground beach and the distant horizon and to include the full width of the curving wave as it broke on the beach.

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Trail Canyon

January 26, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light angles across eroded ridges and gullies on lower slopes of the Panamint Range above Trail Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

This is another photograph that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and one that I was virtually certain would be in black and white when I shot it. I’ve looked down into Trail Canyon quite a few times and tried to “see” a photograph that would somehow consist entirely of the overlapping ridges and layers of stratified rock, tilted at crazy and seemingly opposing angles. My previous photographs of this location had been made late in the day – when the light is beautiful in many directions from this overlook, but when the canyon itself is often shrouded in early shade.

I made this photograph in the morning. It was my first time at this location high in the Panamints at dawn instead of at sunset. I arrived on a cold winter morning before dawn to find no other people there and no wind. (The latter is a bit unusual here, but was certainly welcome, seeing that I would be shooting with long focal length lenses.) The first subject to shoot was the pre-dawn light on clouds high above the landscape. Then my attention moved to the first light striking various higher points within my range of view, and then followed the light as it worked its way down to lower elevations. After that I turned my attention more to guts of this canyon, but was not getting quite what I wanted at first – until the sun rose high enough to peak over ridges and begin to highlight the inner folds of the canyon as seen in this photograph. I made several different compositions, but in the end decided on this one that eliminates any extraneous elements outside of the canyon itself.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

January 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light comes over the Black Mountains to illuminate Death Valley and Trail Canyon at the base of the Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park.

Sometimes I don’t know at the time of exposure whether or not a photograph might end up as a color or a black and white image. However, I saw this scene as being black white as I made the photograph. It was made just a bit later than a photograph of a similar scene that I posted recently, and by this time the intense dawn color was gone and replaces by more subdued tones and far less saturated color. However, by now the early sun light was beginning to directly strike the lower slopes of the foreground canyon.

The large canyon in the foreground at the base of the two dark ridges is part of a complex sometimes called Trail Canyon. At one time there was a road up the canyon to the area near where I made the photograph – from what I hear it provided access to a mine down in the canyon. Some years ago the road washed out in several places, and the park’s policy now is to mostly let these old tracks simply slide into oblivion, thus allowing the terrain to revert to wilderness. This canyon, like many along the lower reaches of the major mountain ranges of the park, intrigues me with its huge gravel fan and in the way that it breaches the incredibly rugged mountains of the Panamint Range.

Equipment, Technique

My Backpacking Photography Article

January 13, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Since someone recently asked about the subject, I thought I’d post a link to my article on backpacking photography – equipment, how to carry it, some techniques, and so forth.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: trail

Coal Chute Point and The Pit

Trail Canyon

Death Valley and Trail Canyon, Morning

My Backpacking Photography Article

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