Tag Archives: water

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

Pasture, Estero, and Drakes Bay

October 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Looking across pastureland and Drakes Estero toward Drakes Bay and the California coast

I have a confession to make regarding Point Reyes. Although it is, relatively speaking, “in my local neighborhood” and I’ve gone there a lot, I have yet to fully wrap my mind around the place to the extent that I feel that I have fully photographed it or fully understand its character. I do have some photographs of the place that I like quite a bit, but when I go there I often find it more difficult to photograph than places like the Sierra, the Big Sur coast, California’s deserts, and similar. I love photographing the ocean, but here the features of the coast are perhaps more subtle, tending more toward beaches and bluffs and bay than to dramatic and rocky coastline. There are hills, but many are rather short, tend to be covered almost completely in forest in many cases, and tend to lack rocky outcroppings. The light can be very interesting, but there is often a fine line between too much and too little sun.

To summarize, I’m still working to figure out my vision of the place. Our most recent visit, in the middle of October during the northern California wildfires, was provided no exceptions to the challenge. There was no fog and the sky was almost clear… except that wildfire smoke often tended to blanket the terrain, producing a sort of yellow quality to the light. Because it is October, most of the green of meadows is long gone, and instead open areas are a kind of muted brown. Yet, I still want to photograph the place, and I know I’ll eventually “get it.” We did spend some time looking for photographs in the park this time, and this lovely inlet from Drakes Estero caught my attention as we traveled out toward the location of the Point Reyes Lighthouse. After we stopped and I looked more closely, I found the old stock fence to be an interesting addition to the photograph.

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

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

Evening, Wildfire Smoke, Tomales Bay

October 18, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke from northern California wildfires colors the evening sky at upper Tomales Bay

In what is perhaps an example of astonishingly bad timing, we were in the region just north of San Francisco for the past few days — near the areas afflicted by the terrible wildfires that have taken lives, destroyed property, and burned over huge swathes of wild land and agricultural areas. The scope of the damage is virtually unprecedented in California, and the events are not yet over as I write this. We were in Petaluma on Friday and most of Saturday, where Patty was to participate in a long-planned wedding of one of her former oboe students. The fires were close enough to Petaluma that breathing masks were provided to those attending the wedding, and at times ash fell from the sky like very light snow flurries.

On Saturday we moved closer to Point Reyes National Seashore. Our original plan had been to spend a couple of days photographing there, but the conditions were not conducive to photography for the most part. We visited the Seashore on Sunday, but the smoke and the naturally brown October conditions, combined with a complete lack of moody for or other clouds left us a bit uninspired. We found a few things to photograph, but we finally decided to just drive north up that coast a ways. We got just past Jenner, where the smoke become even thicker — and we turned around. The smoke was not the only evidence of the fires. Signs were up everywhere — restaurants and similar places — with announcements of fund-raisers, requests for donation, notes from people looking for a place to stay. It was also clear the folks from inland had headed out toward the ocean to try to escape the fires. We left Jenner and headed back toward our lodgings in the Point Reyes area, and just at sunset we arrived at upper Tomales Bay. It was quiet and still as we stopped at a high point from which we could look out over the bay and north toward its mouth. It was still smokey, but here the smoke merely softened the features of the landscape and added color to the sky and the reflecting water.

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

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Mono Lake Shoreline, Evening

October 10, 2017 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

The last light on hills beyond the Mono Lake shoreline

I’ve long been fascinated by the view across this section of the Mono Lake shoreline. It contains a lot of things that I consider essential to the Mono Lake experience — tufa “towers” (though these are more like islands), the shallow shoreline with its curving edges, the larger islands and buttes, the distant mountains in the east, the immense open sky, and the textured and reflecting surface of the water.

In a way, this photograph was sort of (but not exactly!) the result of “killing time” between photographing two other subjects. I had been at a nearby area with colorful aspen trees, and had finished up there — the light was gone sooner than expected when high clouds moved in. At that point I knew that the full moon was going to rise close to sunset, so I decided to find a location along the Mono Lake shoreline to photograph it. I arrived there too early — better than too late! — and had some time to photograph other things as I waited for the moon. I went ahead and set up tripod and camera with some urgency as I noticed to last sunlight on some of those distant hills.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Afternoon Clouds, Reflections

September 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

With all of the other spectacular nearly subjects to photograph, I actually didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the lake where we were camped until near the end of our nine-day backcountry visit in late August and early September. I did walk past it regularly, sometimes with a camera and other times with a large water bucket to take back to camp. I photographed some of the nearby flowers. But mostly I departed from this area to head of to more distant locations, especially those further up the basin.

As the end of the trip approached I began to feel like I had neglected the lake, so I made time to explore it a bit more. At the upper end there was — as is typical — an extensive meadow with several meandering streams, and the meadow gradually became more marshy at the shoreline. On the far side a thin band of meadow ran between the lake the surrounding forest. The first time I went there I was too late, and light had already gone, shaded by nearby ridges. So this time I went a bit earlier in the late afternoon and arrived at the shoreline while there still was light on the trees and meadow. Even better, the air was crystal clear, impressive clouds had formed over large peaks to our south, and the wind had diminished to the point that the water’s surface was almost mirror smooth.

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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

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: water

Pasture, Estero, and Drakes Bay

Evening, Wildfire Smoke, Tomales Bay

Mono Lake Shoreline, Evening

Afternoon Clouds, Reflections

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