Monthly Archives: August 2011

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: People, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man Sitting on Landing, Brick Wall

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Man Sitting on Landing, Brick Wall
Man Sitting on Landing, Brick Wall

Man Sitting on Landing, Brick Wall. New York, New York. August 19, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

On a warm New York City evening, a man sits on the landing of a metal stairway on the exterior of a brick building.

We decided that we would visit the High Line Park in Chelsea early in our recent visit to New York City. Recalling some wonderful evening and sunset light at the park during last year’s visit, we had something like that in mind again on this visit… but that is not quite how it turned out. Although it had been sunny earlier, when we arrived at this location late in the day we could see very dark clouds building over on the New Jersey shoreline and beyond. Even though it was at least an hour and a half before sunset the light was dimming quickly, and we began to see large flashes of lightning in the sky to the west.

While the anticipated warm evening light would have been nice – and was when we returned a few days later – the softer light of these overcast conditions provided some advantages, too. Shooting toward the setting sun, as I would have been doing in this shot, can be tough on the High Line – but this soft light allowed me to more easily handle what would have otherwise been a real exposure challenge at this time of day. Just as we approached this building, the man emerged from the curtained doorway and provided a focal point to the photograph of this wall.

He is looking back over his shoulder for a very good reason. A few minutes after making this exposure – or perhaps sooner! – the lightning began to flash and the thunder began to boom directly overhead. We decided that the elevated park was no place to be in an electrical storm, and we quickly found a way back down to street level as sprinkles started. By the time had headed a block to the east, looking for a place to eat, the wind began to howl and the skies let loose a tremendous downpour, forcing us to choose a restaurant on the basis of proximity rather than reputation!

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: White Mountains

Owens Valley Sky

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Owens Valley Sky
Owens Valley Sky

Owens Valley Sky. Owens Valley, California. August 6, 2005. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dramatic thunderstorms begin to build above Owens Valley, flanked by the White Mountains and the eastern Sierra Nevada range.

If there is any good news about starting to run out of space on my hard drive, it might be that it encourages me to begin the process of reviewing my tens of thousands of archived raw image files, and that leads me to look through files that I haven’t revisited in a long time – and during this process I find photographs that I had forgotten about. Not only is it worthwhile to rediscover these photographs that ended up buried in the archive, but it is also a chance to recall some of the trips on which the photographs were made.

This photograph is yet another (of many!) that wouldn’t have happened at all if it were not for a whole unpredictable series of events and circumstances. I’ll make the story as short as I can, but it is still a bit involved. Almost every summer I share a long pack trip with a group of my friends. In 2005 we had come up with a 14-day trip along a good portion of the John Muir Trail between roughly the Ediza Lake area and Bishop Pass, which included one of the very few sections of the JMT that I had not hiked. We started at Agnew Meadow, headed up past Shadow Lake, turned south on the JMT, stopped at Reds Meadow, continued on to the Duck and Purple Lakes area… where I started to feel like I might be coming down with some sort of bug. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I decided that the prudent thing was to bail out of the trip and exit to Mammoth Lakes since the idea of getting sick on the fourth day of a 14-day hike with a large group was not appealing.

So I hiked out. Ironically, once I crossed the pass to head down to the Mammoth area, I recovered – but it was now too late to rejoin my group since they would be two days ahead of me on the trail at this point. Since I was back at my car now and feeling just fine I figured that I might as well do something else before heading home, so I decided to drive up into the White Mountains and visit the Bristlecone Pine forest. On the way back down from the Whites I just happened to pull out at this spot where the high desert terrain was extra green around a creek, on an afternoon when monsoon conditions were leading to a buildup of afternoon clouds above the Sierra, the Whites, and Owens Valley between the two ranges.

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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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Tile and Concrete Wall

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Tile and Concrete Wall
Tile and Concrete Wall

Tile and Concrete Wall. San Francisco, California. July 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A weathered tile and concrete wall at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

I’ll throw things a bit off-kilter here and interrupt the stream of landscape images from the Sierra Nevada with a minimalist photograph of a tile wall that I made while walking around in San Francisco in July. This may not be quite as simple a photograph as it first appears, and in larger version or print it becomes more apparent that the tiles are varied and weathered in interesting ways that produce a range of textures and colors.

I do a certain number of “minimalist” photographs – some of the urban landscape and others of the natural landscape and seascapes. Sometimes when I’m photographing some of the urban subjects I get some very strange looks from passers-by! I guess it must be hard to imagine why some guy with a fancy camera is pointing it straight at a wall in downtown San Francisco when so many other seemingly more compelling subjects are all around. Or else they might wonder if there is something there that they just don’t see.

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.

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… you need to know that this creates problems with the display of images I post, and I am going to stop using that method to post news of updates to my photography blog. There are some formatting issues with Networked Blogs re-posts that I cannot easily resolve, and because they involve photographs – the main content of this blog! – that turns out to be a deal-stopper. I think that the NetworkedBlogs service is a great idea and I understand that it is working well for many people… just not for me.

If you want to ensure that you see news of the daily updates at this blog, and you have been using NetworkedBlogs to handle that, I hope that you’ll stick with me! There are a number of alternate ways to get my daily (and sometimes more than daily) photographs and other commentary:

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