Tag Archives: travel

Photographs: France, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Ice Cream Shop, Paris

August 9, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I made this photograph on my first day (night, actually) of my first-ever visit to Paris, France. We arrived from London in the afternoon, found our hotel, took a few minutes to get our bearings, and then went for a walk — coffee first, then a bit of wandering and sight-seeing, then dinner, then more wandering that included after-dark photography in the streets of Montmartre.

We ate outside as the sun set and twilight came on, and from our table I watched this small ice cream shop across the street. The colors were wonderful, especially with lighted display cases that alternated red, green, blue, purple, yellow and other lights. I decided I would try to photograph it when we left our restaurant, and I caught it at the moment when the only remaining customers were the two people sitting at the table outside.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Big Creek Bridge

July 17, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mountains drop into the Pacific ocean at Big Creek Bridge, Pacific Coast Highway

Back in January, probably on a hunt for big winter Pacific surf, I headed down the Pacific Coast Highway through the Big Sur Coast, making it all the way to the southern end of this spectacular route. This is often a very rugged meeting of land and sea, and in places the tall coastal mountains drop directly into the ocean. In order to find a path through this landscape, the road sometimes hugs the waterline and sometimes ascends high into these mountains.

If I recall correctly, I initially stopped here to scope out a possible photograph of the golden hour, with the plan being to stop here again on the way north. (In fact, that is what happened, and I did get a few good photographs of the spot in evening light — before the sun dropped below an offshore fog bank and the light died!) The bridge spans (with double arches) the end of the valley where Big Creek meets the ocean. On this afternoon a big winter swell was coming in from the northwest and producing lines of big waves.

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

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

Beach, Fog, and Surf

June 30, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pacific ocean surf at a foggy beach near Point Sur

My part of California — generally the San Francisco Bay Area — is climatically complex, especially during the warm season. We sit between the hot interior climate of the Central Valley and points further east, and the coastal climate under the influence of the Pacific Ocean. The Bay Area is famous for its microclimate, and conditions can diverge wildly among areas that are not that far apart. A day or two ago the weather report told of temperatures well above 100 degrees along the eastern edge of the region where it spills out into the Central Valley and temperatures that never reached 60 degrees along the coast at Point Reyes — a difference of close to 50 degrees between areas separated by a few tens of miles.

The past week has been one of the periodic hot spells, so when I heard about the mid-fifty degree temperatures and fog along the coast I had to go! Today I drove down past Monterey and kept going down the Big Sur coast past Lucia. It was foggy well inland in the morning and it never did clear completely along the coast, where not only was it cold but the winds were howling and kicking up whitecaps on the ocean. I made this photograph near Point Sur, roughly along the line where the inland sun and the coastal fog were doing battle… and the fog was still winning at this point.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

A Purple Mask

June 15, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

People gather outside a store at night.

A purple mask, eh? You may need to look closely at this small web version of the photograph, but if you do you may see that one of the people in the scene is carrying a furry purple mask. Don’t ask. I didn’t.

I’ll keep the commentary on this one to a minimum since I have already written a few times about the circumstances of such photographs. I made it on a summer afternoon and night walk through sections of downtown San Francisco. Here I was wandering slowly along Grant, the main tourist street of the city’s Chinatown district. By this time at night the crowds had diminished quite a bit, but most shops were still open. With fewer people on the street, there were better opportunities to find compositions that were less cluttered.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

Ice Cream Shop, Paris

Big Creek Bridge

Beach, Fog, and Surf

A Purple Mask

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