Fog, Sky, and Clouds. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California. March 14, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Fog glides over Marin County hills beneath winter clouds
I made this photograph in a familiar location in the hills of Marin County, north of San Francisco — at a spot where I often make a brief stop when I visit other locations in this area. As I was surveying a slightly different panoramic view, I happened to see these rounded hills to my south, with their mantle of morning coastal fog drifting across their summits and dropping into valleys. Above this scene, higher clouds from a passing weather system rose much higher into the sky. This combination of bright morning light, drifting fog, and the brilliant higher clouds is unusual, so I had to make a photograph!
I decided to keep the hills at the bottom of the frame to emphasize the space in the sky above. When I made the exposure I did not commit to either a color or black and white rendition, though I did think about some of the issues with the colors in the scene (which I won’t go into here) and the possibility that it could be a stronger monochrome image. However, when working the image in post I began to see a way of taking advantage of the contrast between the sunlit soft forms of the high clouds and the sky that would work best in black and white. (The lower hills were already essentially monochromatic, though with a distinct blue tone.) Of course, once one goes to black and white there is a great deal of creative potential for how the image is handled, using the digital analogs of techniques that would have been employed in the traditional darkroom.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.