Tag Archives: water

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Wetlands Fog, Dawn

July 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflected in a shallow pond, the winter sun rises through morning fog over San Joaquin Valley wetlands

I’m going to take a break from the series of black and white seascapes that I have posted recently and which will soon continue, and today I’m posting a more colorful photograph from this past winter. The scene is at sunrise in the San Joaquin Valley of California back on a mid-February day when we had traveled there to photograph migratory birds. At least that was my excuse. The truth is more complex — I do love photographing the geese, cranes, herons, egrets, pelicans and more, but I also love photographing the flat landscape of this valley, especially in the beautiful, misty atmosphere of winter.

We had arrived here before dawn in near darkness, and a thick ground fog was blocking the view. As the dawn came and lightened the sky above, as is often the case in the San Joaquin, we could see the high clouds through the fog, and the fog soon began to thin and reveal the sun rising through higher clouds to the east above the Sierra Nevada. I found a spot along the west edge of this marsh where I could photograph back across its reflecting surface and straight into the morning’s first light.

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: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Five Ships, Abandoned Piers

July 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Five ships sit at anchor beyond abandoned piers, San Francisco Bay

This will likely be the final in this series of (mostly) black and white photographs featuring this dilapidated pier (piers, actually) along the San Francisco waterfront in the China Basin area. I’ve shared several others recently, but yesterday as I was preparing some prints for a meet-up with some fellow photographers in San Francisco, I took another look at this one and saw that it could work with a more panoramic format.

The ships parked on the horizon probably don’t suggest San Francisco to most people, but it is very common to see them moored out in the San Francisco Bay, where I imagine that they must “park” before or after being offloaded. Quite a few seem to be tankers of some sort. I’ve been intrigued by these ships for some time, and the linear arrangement of five of them on this morning, when fog and backlight made the hills on the other side of the Bay disappear, almost seems a bit mysterious. The piers are also fascinating. They have obviously been there for a long time and just as obviously have been allowed to deteriorate to the point that portions seem to have simply fallen into the water, and it looks like the Bay will ultimately reclaim all of them.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Blue Water, Blue Sky, Boat

June 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Blue light and morning haze over San Francisco Bay

I’m channeling the blue in this photograph, shot along the San Francisco waterfront earlier this month. The facts are straightforward — I was walking along the San Francisco Bay waterfront early in the morning, as I like to do during the summer. There was some morning haze above the bay, left over from the dissipating fog, and it took on a blue coloration from the sky. Across the bay the giant cranes of the Port of Oakland are visible along the East Bay shoreline, nearer a boat passes near the end of breakwater.

I think that some people might wonder at all the city photographs, especially since so much of my photograph is of the natural world — the coast, the Sierra, migratory birds, the desert. I photograph the city for quite a few reasons. For one, it is closer than some of those other subjects, and at a minimum photographing in the city give me a chance to keep my eye “in tune.” In some ways, urban shooting can do more for this than more photography of the natural world, since the urban environment often presents such simplified forms and because I often have to work quickly and rely on (and thereby reinforce) my visual instincts. In addition, I just have to admit that there is a part of me that likes the urban world with its intense and compressed experiences. (Not that this photograph shows that part of it!)

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

Rocky Shoreline, Pacific Ocean

June 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sandstone shoreline rocks along the Pacific Ocean coast at Point Lobos State Reserve

I’ve been sitting on this photograph for some time, perhaps because it isn’t exactly a spectacular scene but more of a familiar and subtle one with personal connections. During a busy period earlier this spring I had not been able to find time to photograph my favorite subjects for a few weeks and I was itching to get out… so I simply headed out one morning to this familiar location.

I’ve been going to Point Lobos for decades, since I was a very young child and my family would make day trips down there. In those days we would explore rocks just like these —in fact, they may have been these very rocks — and investigate nearby tide pools. On this spring morning there were few other visitors, perhaps because of the high cloudiness that was making the day almost a bit gray and softening in the light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: water

Wetlands Fog, Dawn

Five Ships, Abandoned Piers

Blue Water, Blue Sky, Boat

Rocky Shoreline, Pacific Ocean

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