Tag Archives: travel

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Evening Fog, Pacific Ocean

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Evening Fog, Pacific Ocean
Fog begins to appear near dusk along the Pacific Coast below San Francisco.

Evening Fog, Pacific Ocean. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Fog begins to appear near dusk along the Pacific Coast below San Francisco.

Today’s photograph is… quiet… and peaceful. While the world at large is never completely that way, I suppose that the intensity of the craziness has been dialed back at least a bit during the last week or so, and I’m glad for that.

I’ve long had a fondness for this “big landscape with horizon” photographs that don’t really feature any single, central element. Instead they hope to evoke the experience of being quietly in such a place and slowly taking all of that in. The lack of an identifiable primary visual focus is perhaps even the point. I had headed over the hills to the closest section of the coast on this spring day, and as dusk came on the fog gradually began to appear again above the quiet sea.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Point Reyes, Clearing Fog

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Point Reyes, Clearing Fog
Morning fog clears aove the hills and bays of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Point Reyes, Clearing Fog. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning fog clears aove the hills and bays of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Living in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, the Point Reyes National Seashore is merely a longish day trip for me. I haven’t been there since the onset of the pandemic, but in more normal times I make up there during every season of the year — mostly to photograph, but also to see the elephant seals, to escape inland heat… and to stop for morning pasty and coffee at Point Reyes Station.

The park mostly wraps itself along and around Drakes Bay, with the “point” being the furthest terminus of a long peninsula extending into the Pacific Ocean. To make this photograph I stopped near the base of that peninsula and drove up a narrow road toward a high point on the ridge that runs roughly parallel to Tomales Bay. From here I could look across nearby tree-covered hills, past the lower rolling hills, over Drakes Estero, and toward Point Reyes, barely visible in the thinning morning fog.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Forest and Fog

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Forest and Fog
Sunlight begins to thin the morning fog in a Monterey Peninsula forest.

Forest and Fog. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunlight begins to thin the morning fog in a Monterey Peninsula forest.

Today we visit the California coast below the Monterey Peninsula, at the Point Lobos State Reserve. (That is the actual name, though many of us casually refer to it as a state “park.”) I have gone to this place for decades, since my parents took us there as kids. Back then the big attractions were the tide pools (the number one attraction!), the various sea mammals, and the surf. Those are still on my list when I go there, though now I’m more likely to go with the goal of making photographs. (The place, like so much of the Big Sur coast, has become almost impossibly popular, so I try to visit at odd, off-peak times.)

I had gone down there on this 2013 early spring day to make photographs. My typical routine is to arrive very early, before those crowds show up, and spend a few hours photographing in relative quiet. This time I headed to a location in the more northerly portion of the small preserve, where there are views back across the coastal forests and toward the low hills to the east. Because it was morning, the sun was coming over those hills just as the fog was starting to then, allowing a bit more light into the gaps between the trees.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Sandstorm Rising

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Sandstorm Rising
Clouds from a desert sandstorm rise above Death Valley National Park sand dunes.

Sandstorm Rising. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds from a desert sandstorm rise above Death Valley National Park sand dunes.

Today I am sharing yet another of the Death Valley photographs from my spring 2013 visit when, among other things, I had a couple of opportunities to photograph in sandstorm conditions. Like many photographers I tend to photograph this location early in the morning and late in the evening, when the light is softer and subtle colors emerge in the fascinating shapes of the dunes. But the stark midday light can be interesting too, especially when the light is softened and diffused by a dust-filled atmosphere.

My roots are in black and white film photography, and I still find myself leaning back in that direction fairly often. I feel that in many cases monochrome can let us see the subject more in terms of shapes, textures, tones — less as an attempt at literal representation of the subject and more about how we choose to interpret it. With monochrome we explicitly begin by accepting an interpretation that cannot be objectively accurate, since the world is (almost) never monochromatic. In addition, we have more freedom do things during the post-processing stages (as we did in the film era) that we probably could not get away with in color, and the result still register as being “true.”

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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.