Tag Archives: skim

Five Brown Peilicans

Five Brown Peilicans
Five brown pelicans skim along just above the surf along the California coast on a winter day.

Five Brown Peilicans. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Five brown pelicans skim along just above the surf along the California coast on a winter day.

Photographing along this section of California’s coast presents a lot of decisions. Should I focus on winter surf, the haze and clouds, the land-meets-sea landscape, beaches, surfers and beachcombers, wildlife? I usually start out with one or two of these in mind — it was the atmosphere and the waves on this visit — but soon get distracted by the others.

The coastal pelicans are usually spotted gliding along just offshore, heading north or south along the coast. (They do land, but it is less common to find them settled on the ground.) They often fly extremely close to the water — so close that it seems that they are almost touching it as they follow the counters of the rising and falling surf.


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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Pelicans and Cormorants – Point Lobos

Three Pelicans, Shadows
Three Pelicans, Shadows

Three Pelicans, Shadows. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. September 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three Pelicans, Reflections
Three Pelicans, Reflections

Point Lobos State Reserve, California. September 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cormorant, Reflected Clouds
Cormorant, Reflected Clouds

Cormorant, Reflected Clouds. Point Lobos State Reserve, California. September 2, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Something a bit different today – I’m bundling three wildlife photographs into a single post. As I queue this message in advance on an early September morning, it appears that I have enough photographs ready for posting to carry me through October! I think I can afford to put three in this post!

All three were made from the same point on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean at Point Lobos, where I had gone – on Labor Day! – primarily to do landscape/seascape photography. It was an interesting and slightly unusual day. Tropical monsoonal moisture had been streaming over the area for a few days, which is not quite a typical pattern in this area, and the morning started out cloudy. Although it was Labor Day, a bit day for travel and tourism, I arrived early enough that things were still quiet.

On a more typical Point Lobos shooting day, at least one without fog, I would likely complete my work and leave by or well before noon. But the broken overcast allowed interesting and filtered light to continue well into the early afternoon, so I stuck around. After shooting in the forest along the north shore – much easier in filtered than in direct light – I decided I would make a loop along the high bluffs on my way back to my car. I came to this spot just as a very large flock of pelicans floated past below, barely skimming the tops of the almost glassy-calm ocean. With filtered top-light and a good vantage point, I decided to put on the long lens and see what might fly by. Here are a couple of photographs of pelicans and cormorants flying right above the water.

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.

Pelicans Skimming the Waves

Pelicans Skimming the Waves
Pelicans Skimming the Waves

Pelicans Skimming the Waves. Waddell Creek Beach, California. June 23, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A flock of pelicans skims inches above the surface of the Pacific Ocean off of Waddell Creek Beach, Big Basin State Park, California.

Low flying pelicans skim just inches above the surface of the water near the shoreline at Waddell Creek Beach in Big Basin State Park along the California coastline. Having spent some time staring at these birds as they fly along the coast, I’m more and more amazed by their ability to closely track contours of beach and waves as they fly so low – they flow over this moving “terrain” like water over rocks. In this photograph the water picks up subtle light reflected by the slightly foggy evening sky beyond.

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Pelicans and Surf

Pelicans and Surf
Pelicans and Surf

Pelicans and Surf. Waddell Creek Beach, California. June 23, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of a flock of pelicans in flight just above Pacific Ocean surf at Waddell Creek Beach, Big Basin State Park, California.

Every five or ten minutes another flock of northbound pelicans descended to the water just offshore at Waddell Creek Beach at Big Basin State Park along the California coast just north of the town of Davenport. It was late and the light was diffused and subdued by high clouds and the incoming fog bank a this flock skimmed just above the surf.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.

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