Tag Archives: tree

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Trees

June 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Closely spaced coast redwood trees at Butano State Park

Going to this spot was a special and unusual pleasure. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area almost all of my life (save my first four years in Minnesota) I know may way around much of the local outdoor scene quite well. From the time I was a small child my family spent weekends visiting the many area parks, often picnicking and then hiking extensively. Yet somehow I had never visited Butano Redwoods State Park, tucked into the coastal mountains between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz, and a very quite alternative to some of the more popular and busy redwood parks.

I’m not yet any sort of expert on this park, but the central feature appears to be an intimate little creek flowing down a small and quiet valley. It looks to me like the area must have been logged many years ago, as there are old stumps of huge long-gone trees, and most of the living trees are relatively slender. But they are big enough to give the feeling of the redwood forest, and even in this dry year the place is lush and full of vegetation. And during my short walk to photograph in this watershed I saw only a handful of other people. I spotted this tightly spaced group of trees across the canyon and positioned myself so that I could photograph a wall of redwood trunks with a few slender trunks breaking up the larger patterns. A few moments later the thing fog overhead began to clear and the bright shafts of light made the forest beautiful… but almost impossible to photograph!

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: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

No POV Parking

April 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Glowing lights inside a shop building at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, reflected in a pool of rainwater

I have now been doing night photography at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California for perhaps a decade. Back when I visited for the first time I would not have expected that night photography or this particular location would still occupy me today, but they do. In many ways, photographing this location at night is an almost meditative experience. I’m long past the initial surprise to find such a place exists—with its long history and old structures in varied states of decay—and I now regard it as a familiar place. The photography itself is part of the attraction. I continue to find new subjects and to see old subjects in new ways and to watch how the place changes over time. But it is also about the slow, quiet, and methodical work of photographing at night. In many places I can barely see my subjects, and I have to wander around slowly and carefully, taking time to look in places that might initially not seem to offer anything of interest. When I think of this photography, the damp air near the waterfront and the deep quiet form as great a part of the experience as anything else.

This visit followed a week when several rain storms had passed over the Bay Area. (I had missed the actual storms, as I was away photographing in Death Valley.) As soon as I arrived at Mare Island I noticed that there were puddles everywhere, so I was on the lookout for reflections. This building is absolutely huge, but in other ways not all that exciting in daylight—but at night, with interior lights glowing, it can become a bit mysterious.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Redwood Forest, Muir Woods

April 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A tall, thin bay tree reaches for the light in front of a row of coast redwood trees, Muir Woods National Monument

This cathedral of redwood trees still brings me to a stop every time I walk up the main valley at Muir Woods National Monument. Typically I arrive very early in the morning, often before the park opens, when I can have the trail almost to myself. (I’m happy to share “my” park with the small number of other early morning visitors, who are usually very quiet.) This row of big trees is in a spot near where several trails meet up, and the light can range from deep shade to filtered sun.

The light is the tricky thing when photographing here. People are often surprised by just how little light may make it down through the canopy of the redwood forest. On this morning there was a layer of high clouds that muted the light, with only occasional breaks allowing more direct light. As a result, this was a 13 second exposure! The idea here was to find a “wall of trees” composition, with some depth from additional trees perhaps visible in the gaps among the main foreground group. I liked the visual dissonance of the single slender bay tree trunk curving across the scene to the left.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Winter Oak and Fog

April 2, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Winter fog drifts around a dormant oak tree, Yosemite Valley

This appeared to be the one Valley meadow with fog in it on this early winter morning. Up early, we had taken a look at the conditions and figured that meadow fog might not be on the morning agenda, but on a hunch we decided to do a loop past several Yosemite Valley meadows anyway—and here at Stoneman Meadow we found ground fog gently moving back and forth across the clearing.

It was early enough and cold enough that few other people were out, so the scene was very quite and peaceful. The fog remained within the confines of the meadow, only penetrating a short distance into the surrounding forests when it drifted a bit. At first it seemed like we had arrived just in time and that the fog was going to dissipate quickly, so I set up quickly and started photographing with the expectation that I would not have long to work. But very quickly the fog began to thicken until it was perhaps 20 feet deep, and soon it obscured the views across the meadow to forest trees. As this fog, too, began to thin I waited for it to line up behind this solitary barren tree.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: tree

Redwood Trees

No POV Parking

Redwood Forest, Muir Woods

Winter Oak and Fog

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