Tag Archives: seascape

Arch, Bridge, Big Sur Headlands

One more time, this subject from the upper Big Sur coast is one that I shared last week… and last year… and perhaps almost every year before that. Yes, I’ve been stopping to photograph here for years. Each time I tell myself, “OK, you are done with this scene now.” And almost every time I pass that way again I end up stopping. And I frequently find that the atmosphere has changed to present some new way of seeing it.

This visit was on a late-February morning. The surf was large, but not monumental. Yet it was enough to combine with thinning fog to produce a luminous haze along the edge of the water. This haze was gently illuminated by the morning sun rising above the coastal mountains, and its light arrived on the flat headlands at the left just as I arrived.


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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Pacific Coast Highway, Headlands

This landscape that reminds me that change is the rule. It invites all sorts of questions. How long ago were those sea stacks part of the mainland? How long until the cliff-edge trail I’m slips into the ocean? Where will the next route-closing landslide occur? The dynamism of the landscape is clearly present here.

This time I visited for a few hours on a late-winter morning. The skies were mostly clear along the coast, as is common here between storms, but there was scattered fog and everywhere there was mist, from both the clearing fog and from ocean spray. Early in the morning the sun is blocked by coastal mountains, but as it rises its light angles down among these headlands.


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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Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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Morning Fog, Pacific Coast Highway Bridge

I have a long relationship with this spot. I have photographed here for two decades. I recall the first time — I went to this part of the coast with a new long lens, ended up here more or less by accident, and the new lens was exactly the one I needed for the subject. Since then I have photographed it in all conditions — morning, midday, evening, fog, clear skies, sunset.

The main features in the scene remain the same, but the mood undergoes remarkable changes. In some of my photographs the details are much clearer than in this one, while in others the coastal fog almost completely obscures them. On this morning thin fog became luminous in the early light as the sun rose above the mountains of the Big Sur coastline.


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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Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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Winter Surf and Clouds

If you visited this beach, located south of San Francisco, on a sunny summer day you would be tempted to wander the sand, perhaps wade into the surf, or even go for swim. But this was not that day. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day stormy weather in the Gulf of Alaska sent huge swells toward the California coast. Waves topped thirty feet and were close to that here. The furthest waves in the distance in this photograph were just plain huge.

It was cloudy and trying to rain when we arrived. But the storm was passing and the clouds soon began to thin. Beams of light broke through, and it wasn’t long before blue sky appeared. But the surf continued to rage, and as the waves broke they rolled up onto and across the beach — a place where you definitely did not want to stand on this afternoon.


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.

Blog | About | Instagram | Flickr | Facebook | Threads | PostEmail

Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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