Tag Archives: travel

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Winter Fog, Ridges

February 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog wraps around the lower slopes of Marin County mountains along the Pacific coast north of San Francisco

This was the sort of day of photography that I have learned to accept as something that comes with the territory. I was up hours before dawn, and on the road shortly after that, with an idea of photographing in the redwoods of Marin County north of the Golden Gate, or perhaps of photographing along the coast where high surf was predicted. As I got on the road I noticed that there was some fog about, which is fine as I often like photographing in such conditions. Nearly an hour later as the time of sunrise approached, I noticed that the day was not becoming light very fast and, in fact, things were looking quite gray. I crossed the Golden Gate in fog, stopped briefly on the north side of the bridge, and wasn’t able to see much of anything. I continued on to the Muir Woods area and parked. As I sat in the car, it became clear that there wasn’t going to be much in the way of compelling light here, either. (I’m not one to insist on incredible light, so when I say that the light wasn’t promising… I mean it!) I soon decided to leave and go up the coast a ways. As I drove I figured out that the murky light was the result of a combination of thick coastal fog, generally hazy conditions where it wasn’t foggy, and above it all the high clouds of a passing weather front.

While finding myself in conditions like these doesn’t exactly make me happy – who wouldn’t prefer beautiful light and easy subjects!? – I don’t get upset about it any more. In order to find really special subjects and light one must simply go “out there” a lot to increase the odds. Special things are special at least partially because they are not ordinary, and we cannot expect stupendous conditions on every outing. I shoot enough to have had the good fortune to almost regularly encounter truly wonderful conditions and to have some idea how to work with conditions that are merely good. But along with this good, I also have to accept the possibility – certainty, actually – that there will be some days when it seems like nothing happens. This was one of those days. I enjoyed being out and about, and I explored a few places that I had not visited before. I gave up on some ideas, tried others, and when the light was clearly not going to be good in the forest, I headed for the coast. When that didn’t work, I headed into the hills. It was what it was! Eventually, I ended up at the Mount Tamalpais State Park high in the Marin hills, and around one bend in the road the view opened to the west and I could see the ocean of fog bumping up against ridges below me and stretching on out over the ocean – so I stopped and made the only photographs of the day that worked. It wasn’t a great day… but it was still a good day!

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

Coastal Bluffs, Clouds, Dusk

February 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Coastal bluffs along the Pacific coast near Davenport, California in dusk light

I made this photograph on a day when I had gone to the coast to try to meet up with a “photo walk” group that was photographing (and socializing) in various areas in and around Santa Cruz, California. I never did quite manage to connect up with them – it is a long story – but I did get to shoot along the coastal bluffs near Davenport in the afternoon and as the day came to an end.

In late afternoon the light was mostly gray, with high clouds from a passing weak weather front blocking the western sky. However, just minutes before sunset the sunlight managed to sneak through a gap along the horizon and momentarily suffuse the coast with beautiful and soft light. I made some photographs during that moment, but I was not done yet when that light faded. Some of the most interesting light can come after sunset, when there may still be a glow from the sky but when this light is more diffused and softer. As the evening came on, I continued shooting until it was almost too dark to find my way back to my car, making exposures that gradually lengthened until I was using a 30 second exposure! This is one of the long exposures, allowing the clouds to move a bit and the waves and surf to blend together into a sort of hazy mist.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Leaves, Sand

January 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The thing that most often first catches my attention in the bottom of slot canyons, such as this small one in the Zion National Park high country, is the way that they twist between closely spaced vertical walls. There is virtually nothing quite like this in our experience. But the thing I notice first is not necessarily the thing I remember most. I often wonder how others might regard my photographs, since I know that they cannot share the full context of the images that I know from being in these places. (I’ve often said that we, as the photographers, are perhaps the least able to see our own work objectively, since we cannot easily put aside these non-photographic things that are no longer present in the purely visual medium within which we work.) When I think of these canyons I think of the sound, often deadened by the sand and perhaps by vegetation, and of the feeling of the air, which always different from the feeling of the air outside the canyon – most often cooler when the “outside” air is warm but also warmer when the canyon provides shelter from cool-season winds. And it those canyons with water flowing through them, there is the constant, though often gentle sound of water flowing and trickling.

I also usually end up slowing down and looking at many small things that might not first be seen – the leftover pattern of water than may have flowed through weeks or months earlier, place where the sand has been marked by the passage of a small animal or by grass moving across its surface in the breeze, the mixture of rocks that must have come from distant places, plants growing in odd cracks in the rock, patterns in the rock walls, the passage from one rock layer to another, and more. On this fall day it had been windy and lots of autumn “stuff” was littering the canyon floor, which here was pink sandstone sand, further colored by the glowing light reflected from the red rock canyon walls.

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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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Pines and Sandstone Cliff

January 26, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A sparse forest of pine trees in front of a towering sandstone cliff, Zion National Park

This could be one of those “don’t forget to look around” photographs – a reminder to look beyond the most obvious thing that you (and others) might have stopped for. The photograph is from Zion National Park, made on my late October visit when we passed through on the way to shoot further east in Utah. The specific location is a well-known automobile pull-out that features a large and impressive nearby geological feature, with signage around the parking lot mostly about that thing. And it is an interesting and worthy site, but one that I’ve struggled to see as a photograph. In fact, the whole area right near here has been a bit this way – a very interesting place where I’ve stopped a few times, but also one where I’ve had a difficult time seeing how to photograph the attractive features found here.

From this location, trees growing on a middle-distance rise can be seen. I’ve also looked at them before and wondered how or whether they could make a photograph. Those trees are the trees in this photograph. What seemed different this time was the result of interesting and changing lighting conditions. The light was coming from the side and a bit behind the trees, so it highlighted the branches and even created just a tiny bit of that glow that I often look for with this subject. In addition, there were broken clouds about, and they were being blown past fairly quickly by a brisk wind – so the light was in a constant state of change. One moment the trees were in a cloud shadow, and the next they were in sun. When they were in sun, the foreground and background might be in sun, too, or in shade, or even some combination of the two. I love these conditions since so many things are (fleetingly) possible with the light. My approach is to make some guesses about what might with the light, find a composition that I think will work, and then pay careful attention to what is happening. This photograph was exposed during a lucky instant when the clouds shaded the background sandstone cliff, and the slightly cloud-muted sun shone on the trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

Winter Fog, Ridges

Coastal Bluffs, Clouds, Dusk

Autumn Leaves, Sand

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