Since many of you may be more familiar with my landscape photography, it wouldn’t surprise me if a few of you are wondering what has happened? Where did it go? What’s up with all the street photography? How does this all connect? Does it connect at all?

First, the landscape photography hasn’t disappeared and more of it will return here soon. In fact, some upcoming landscape photography projects should generate quite a bit of that sort of work once again before very long.

Second, let me share a bit more about the recent (and upcoming) focus on urban, street, and travel photography.

• One reason is practical. During the first part of this summer, scheduling and other issues conspired in ways that I ended up spending much less time in wild places than usual. To some extent, I regret having been unable to make it to the Sierra in the past couple of months, but on the other hand my favorite Sierra season is just beginning and I’ll be there quite a bit very soon.
• While I did not travel to those places, I did travel to other places with interesting urban subjects. Most notably I spent two weeks traveling to Chicago and New York City, and I was able to photograph a lot in the latter location for over a week. Yes, you can expect to see a lot more New York City photographs!
• While I obviously have a deep and long-standing connection to the natural world, especially that of the western United States, I also love cities. While it is unlikely that I’ll never live in a place like Manhattan, such urban areas fascinate and energize me, and my instinct is to photograph them.
• Photography is photography — it isn’t just landscape photography, or wildlife photography, or portraits, or street photography, or sports photography, and it certainly isn’t limited to certain locations or subjects. I see almost all subjects as potential photographs, and I see many of the same underlying elements and concepts and structures in a wide range of subjects. In my view, there is a clear connection between how I see natural landscape and urban landscapes, between nature photography and street photography, and much more.
• Shooting (and viewing) photography outside of my personal photographic comfort zone helps me see and understand all photographic subjects more clearly and more intensely. I’m convinced that my landscape photography experience informs my street photography, and that shooting street can make me see the landscape in new and interesting ways.

Whether you agree or not, I hope that you’ll find something interesting in this “different” work that is likely to appear quite a bit over the next few weeks. And if not… autumn is coming, I’m heading into the field to shoot landscapes again very soon, and you can look forward to new work of the more familiar sort again before long!

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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