Tag Archives: winter

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

Winter Sunset, Waddell Beach

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Winter Sunset, Waddell Beach. Big Basin State Park, Pacific Coast, California. December 20, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Pacific Ocean coastal winter sunset at Waddell Beach, Big Basin State Park, California.

Getting this photograph was a long story with a surprise ending.

Late this morning my sons asked me if I would drive them to San Francisco and to their respective apartments. I didn’t have any other concrete plans so I said yes and decided to pack a lighter than usual selection of camera equipment and a tripod on the off chance that I’d find something to photograph. By the time we finished lunch in the Mission and drove through the Haight out to the Richmond and I finally traversed 19th Avenue to the south and got out of urban traffic… it was 3:00 p.m… and starting to rain – not exactly what I had in mind for photography.

I figured I might as well drive down the coast through Pacifica, and as I did so the rain began to increase a bit. Photography was looking less likely. But then I noticed that this seemed to be one of those northern California storms that cuts off fairly abruptly south of San Francisco and that the rain was diminishing as I drove down the coast. With this in mind I decided to get past Half Moon Bay and then see how far south I could get while the light was still good. I finally ended up in the large parking lot by the Beach where Waddell Creek emerges from the mountains of Big Basin State Park and merges with the ocean. Unfortunately, nothing was striking me as especially photogenic about the scene – there were interesting clouds, but there are often clouds this interesting and the light was otherwise not inspiring me.

So I got decided that it had been a fun drive and that I’d get back in the car and head home via Santa Cruz without any photographs. I pulled out of the parking lot… and about five seconds later as I crossed the Waddell Creek bridge I happened to glance down and toward the water… and I had one of those “Whoa!” moments as I saw this reflection in the pool where the creek reaches the beach. I quickly did a u-turn, came back and parked the car, grabbed my gear, and headed back across the road… hoping the light would hold long enough to make a few exposures of this thin strand of beach suspended between the real and reflected skies.

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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News, Workshops

Yosemite Valley Photography Workshops: Walklet and Frye

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I see that the Ansel Adams Gallery has scheduled a couple of interesting winter season workshops.

  • Digital Printing and the Zone System With Michael Frye on January 19-23, 2010 – Michael Frye is both a well-known and highly-regarded photographer of Yosemite and other subjects and the author of the well-known guide book to photographing in the Valley.
  • Winter Light II With Keith Walklet on February 17-22, 2010. Walklet is a long-time Yosemite Park photographer whose experience and knowledge is extraordinary. (As I write this I have an mental image of him disappearing over a far ridge above upper Cathedral Lake last summer as he headed out to photograph some high, austere terrain.)

Both workshops take place during the beautiful winter season in the Valley and those trying to get “their shot” of Horsetail Fall may have a chance during Keith’s workshop in mid-late February.

News

Winter arrives in the Sierra?

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A few years ago I did what was a traditional end-of-season backpack trip out of Tuolumne Meadows on the last weekend during which the NPS permits overnight parking on Tioga Pass road – this is typically on or just before October 15. It was a beautiful weekend with – as I always hope for in October – pleasant, sunny conditions and beautiful light.

The following weekend a backpacking buddy who had been unable to make that trip tried his own end-of-seasons visit, hoping to wander up into the Twenty Lakes Basin area just east of Tioga Pass. He arrived late and rolled out his bivy sack at the small campground by the lake right below Tioga Pass… and woke up the next morning with more than a half foot of snow on top of him and more on the way. He scrambled out of his bag, got into his car, and managed to get out just before the road was blocked. He liked to say that he was there for the switch from fall to winter… literally.

It sounds like something similar may happen over the next 24 hours. From all reports, one of the biggest October storms that we’ve seen in California in decades may be sweeping through tonight and tomorrow, bringing heavy winds, a lot of rain, and the potential for some significant snow at the higher elevations.

The folks at the Dweeb Report (interesting source of Sierra weather info) include an ominous sentence in their most recent update: “WINDS WITH THIS SYSTEM OVER THE CREST COULD REACH BETWEEN 120MPH AND 140MPH OVER THE CENTRAL SIERRA.”

Of course, you knew this was leading to a comment on aspens, right? Given the rather strange conditions for aspen color this fall, somehow it doesn’t seem at all surprising that the storm might bring down a good portion of the remaining leaves!

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.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


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

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

Beach Walkers, Winter Sunset

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Winter Sunset, Panther Beach

Beach Walkers, Winter Sunset. Pacific Coast, California. January 11, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of beachwalkers cross the sand before sunset at the end of a winter day.

I made this photograph last winter, but didn’t rediscover it until yesterday when I had the opportunity to go back though some work from early this year. It is probably another case of initially viewing the photograph from the perspective of what I thought I was shooting at the time – and it wasn’t successful from that perspective – versus coming back to it with some aesthetic distance and seeing it for what it is. It also helped, I think, to lose some of the sky and present it as a 2:1 ratio panoramic format.

This was actually my first visit to this particular beach. I had driven past many times without stopping, but for some reason on this evening I pulled over and wandered down to the beach, shooting there and from the bluffs above the beach.

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

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