I was out to shoot the sunset at McClures Beach in Point Reyes, just north of San Francisco, but the fog became too thick. I knew about this row of trees on the way to the Point Reyes Lighthouse so I headed over there. I have been waiting for about 3 years for a misty foggy sort of day where I could capture this scene with some extra depth and light that you don't see without fog. Notice how the trees graduallt receed into the mist? ... If you try this, walk the entire length of the path looking for the best composition. This was halfway down.
At sunset, the coastal fog began to move inland towards the distant horizon. As it did, it wrapped around Mt. Tamalpais creating fantastic swirling shapes. I used a 3-second exposure to capture the motion as the last rays of the sun turned the high clouds a brilliant red. Usually by June, the flowers have faded but because of a cool spring, they were fortunately there so I backed up the hill under a prickly manzanita bush to get the flowers into the foreground. Sausalito and Mill Valley are in the foreground with the Richmond San Rafael bridge crossing the bay under the fog to the left. San Francisco is behind the fog bank to the right.
A 1-minute exposure brings out the softness of this morning by the bay. it was a misty and foggy morning with a few high clouds as the sun rose. Finally an opening in the clouds allowed the city to be in the spotlight for a while. Normally the city is silhouetted on a foggy morning.
The trunks of the Redwood tree are often scarred by summer fires. The new wood then grows around the scar and eventually covers it up completely!
The same view as #1 but the trunks are wet, which makes the colors more saturated. A walk through the woods can be thought of as a series of views framed by vertical and angled trunks.
Two trees are joined together. They may have been shoots from an older tree, it is difficult to tell. They are so massive that they simply fuse together when they get too close!
The San Andreas fault heads north from San Francisco, 12 miles to the south and continues on in front of the Bolinas Ridge in the distance. It moved 16 feet in 1906. As if moves, it distorts the land around it, piling up ridges on either side. Erosion has enhanced the ridges in to the rounded sharpes that you see here. A dramatic misty sunset enhanced the look of these formations even more. You can see low fog over the Pacific Ocean in the distance on the left side. Above the moist redwood forest, the currently green grassland dries out in the 7-month summer dry season.
It is a very scenic 40 minute walk from the trailhead in Mill Valley to this beach. Along the way, you can see babcats, owls and lots of other wildlife. The beach and cliffs are multicolored and dramatic. The colors you see here are natural and show up best on a rainy and cloudy day, just as a wet rock has better color than a dry one!
A winter storm begins to clear at sunrise over the San Francisco Bay. The openings in the clouds created a light show for just a few minutes and then the clouds cleared away leaving a clear and sunny day ahead.
The bard of the coastal Redwood is fire resistant but not completely so. Summer fires can damage the trunks, but they usually grow back.
Here is a view halfway up the main canyon ar Muir Woods Namtional Monument in Marin County. I used the big trees to frame a more distant view. The dark marking on the trunks are the results of summer dry season fires, which used to sweep through the canyon before this area was inhabited my humans. The bark is relatively fire retardent but fires still can do damage and even hollow out trunks, which are repaired with further growth.
Tennesee Valley Beach near Mill Valley, California has incredible textured sand and brilliant cliffs of gold in the right light. Normally this is in the shadows and appears dark, but in the morning and after sunset, the colors come out.
After a series of large winter storms, the sky opened up a bit and the wind calmed down on the Marin Headlands. The surf was large so I waited for a brief pullback in the waves and some glossy reflections in the reddish black sand. Then a wave broke and I captured the moment. Sure I got soaked but it was worth it!
McClures Beach is a great place to go for low tide if you wish to capture the sand at it most reflective state. Add in some big winter waves, a dramatic sky, and some good timing and it is possible to capture a nice seascape. You have to get wet to get in close enough to show the turbulent sea. I also wanted to show how the similarity between the foreground rocks and the background rocks.
The sun rises through layers of cloud and fog and reflectins off of the bay waters on a warm November morning. I used a short exposure to capture the detail in the water and sky. The reds were slightly desaturated to retain detail.
The last light of the day broke through the clouds and lit up the side of cliffs and rock just after a late winter storm. Large waves driven by high winds often combined into even larger waves as they pounded the soft sand. It could not have been a more dramatic sunset.
This long-exposure image was created under a 3/4 full moon about 1 hour after sunset. It allowed the moon to light the seascape much as the sun does during the daytime. The waves have been reduced to a haze and the star trails indicate how much each star had moved during the exposure. It was a warm night and after a while, my eyes became used to the darkness and I could see the faint blue in the sky. This is how it felt to be out here, alone at night in an alien place. In order to get a properly exposed photograph at night, a lot of experimentation is required. In previous outings at night with strong moonlight, I tried exposures from 5 minutes to an hour. 30 minutes is just about right with this amount of moonlight and the aperture nearly wide open at F5 with ISO 50. Under a quarter moon, perhaps an hour is necessary. Changing the ISO to 200
reduces the exposure time and also produces less heat sensor noise, which is different than regular ISO noise. I use ISO 200 now as long as I can get an exposure of at least 10 minutes, to show movement in the stars.
Usually when I find a good composition and the light is looking right, I make a commitment to wait for the best light for that particular scene. That is because I used to run around trying to get as many shots as I could with good light, and I would get home and realize that I had 5 different compositions but only one had good light. So I would delete the rest of them and return later to try for the other ones.
I have always liked to visit McClure
The light at sunrise was spectacular following an unusual October storm. I arranged the posts in the frame to make a diagonal line pointing towards the city. The extra long exposure softened the clouds and water to enhance the impression of how it felt to be there on this morning. Without the two stacked filters, the exposure time would have been about 1 second and that would have made the water look rather messy. Also, I still had to use a ND grad filter to darken the sky in relation to the water just as I would have had I not used the two stacked filters.
A strong breeze and long exposure time softened the flowing grasses and trees on Mt. Tamalpais. It also pushed the fog rapidly through the Golden Gate and into the bay this evening. I used a 1-second exposure to show lots of more motion. Here, I also had to shelter the camera and tripod with my body in order to avoid camera shake.
The wind bent the trees and grasses as the fog rolled quickly over the lower hills at Mt Tamalpais on a late spring evening. Most of the time when there is low ocean fog, the skies are clear, so seeing higher clouds in the sky is a rare event. I used a 1/2-second exposure to show a little motion in the fog and the foreground grasses. I like including motion whenever possible even if it is extra work. I had to shelter the camera and tripod with my body in order to avoid camera shake.