Tag Archives: waves

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

Sea Stacks, Big Sur Coastline

May 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Sea stacks line the rugged California Big Sur coastline below the Pacific Coast Highway.

I had some free time on Friday morning, so I decided to head over to the coast below Monterey. I had some discussions with someone earlier this week about photographs featuring coastal fog and hills, and I think that may be what planted the idea in my mind, though it turned out that conditions were not quite ideal for that particular sort of thing. However, it was a beautiful spring morning along the Big Sur coast, with the bright sun somewhat modulated by some atmospheric haze and a bit of fog here and there along ridge tops.

For those who may not have heard, driving this section of the Coast Highway is a bit tricky right now due to washouts and closures. I had to wait for a pilot vehicle to lead scores of us through one large section, and in another spot the road was reduced to a single lane by a large landslide. I understand that further south the road is actually closed completely, necessitating an inland detour.

The unusual traffic situation did create one advantage for me, however. Usually there is enough traffic on this famous route that driving along at very slow speeds annoys other drivers – so I sometimes have to keep going right past places I might otherwise want to stop and investigate. However, yesterday I quickly figured out that with 20-30 minutes between waves of traffic as the road opened and closed, all I had to do was pull over after passing one of the blockages, wait for the other cars to pass, and then drive in a more leisurely way with plenty of opportunities to stop.

So as I drove past this area that I had not really looked at closely in the past – it is between a couple of other spots that I know well – I was able to drive slowly, pull over to look more carefully, backtrack, and generally get to see it more than in the past. I first pulled off near this spot simply to turn around to go back and check a spot I had just passed. As I did so I noticed a painter packing up his gear. I did my “turn around,” looked at the spot I had passed, decided it wasn’t promising after all… and came right back to the spot where I had seen the painter. A short trail led down to the edge of the bluff and provided this view along the coast to the south.

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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

Winter Dusk, Carmel Highlands Near Yankee Point

December 17, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Winter dusk light and clouds over the Pacific Ocean at Carmel Highlands near Yankee Point, Pacific Coast Highway, California.

This is the companion image to the black and white photograph I posted yesterday, Before I made the exposures that I used to create that black and white landscape-orientation image, I first made a quick series of bracketed exposures in portrait mode. As I photographed, I knew that the dynamic range was going to be too large for a singe exposure so I quickly made a series of four exposures, from which I selected two that have blended to produce this image.

This photograph is 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: Ocean & Coast

Yankee Point and Cypress, Carmel Highlands, Dusk

December 16, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

A Carmel Highlands cypress trees stands at the edge of a cliff above the Pacific Ocean and Yankee Point at dusk.

Oddly, this is a photograph that sort of “didn’t make the cut” the first time I went through the batch shortly after making the photographs in early 2010. I had spent the afternoon photographing further south in the Big Sur area and several other photographs from the set turned out more as I expected – and this one seemed like a sort of problem child photograph, so I didn’t take the time needed to work with it. Eventually I forgot about it as I went on to other projects.

The photo had been almost a bit of a grab shot. As I was heading north back up the coast, thinking I had finished my shooting and was now on the way home, I was stunned to catch a glimpse of some intense post-sunset light as I rounded the bend at the head of this cove in Carmel Highlands. I wasn’t certain that I could find a composition and work out a photograph in the brief interval the probably remained before the light faded, but I quickly put on the wide angle zoom, attached the camera to the tripod, and headed over to the edge of the bluff. Exposure was a terrible problem because the brilliant and very colorful sky was quite bright, while the close side of the foreground tree was nearly black. I made managed to shoot the scene a few times, shifting from landscape to portrait mode and making three bracketed exposures of each composition.

When I got home and looked at the raw files I think I decided that it was just going to be too much work for too little reward, and I instead went to work on more promising shots from earlier in the afternoon. This week I came upon the series of shots again and wondered what I could do with them. My first inclination was to go with the color, and I did come up with a portrait orientation image in color that I will probably post before long. Then, as I began to work on the landscape mode image, I started to see it as having potential as a monochrome image. I tried it. I liked it. And here it is!

This photograph is 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Ocean Beach, Winter Surf

February 19, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Black and white photograph of winter surf along Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California.

On a day like this one it was hard to resist shooting from an obvious spot like this – right by the Cliff House, looking south along the incoming winter surf at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. With the strong backlight coming through the ocean spray and overcast and fog, the light was very diffused, and it made it possible to shoot directly into the otherwise impossibly bright direct reflections of the sun on the surf. A lot of what is in this photograph is subtle, and you might miss it in this small on-screen image – but look for the very faint outline of the distant hills of the San Francisco Peninsula and the subtle differences in tonality in the cloudy sky.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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