All posts by G Dan Mitchell

G Dan Mitchell, photographer and visual opportunist focusing on the Pacific coast, the Sierra Nevada, redwood forests, California oak/grasslands, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography and more. Posting daily photographs since 2005, along with articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

Commentary, Photograph Exposed

A Photograph Exposed: One Subject, Two Compositions

August 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail. A companion article looks at post processing issues related to the same subject.)

Landscape photographs depend on many things: good fortune to be in the right place at the right time, experience that helps predict when and where to find “right place at the right time,” sensitivity and experience that help you recognize the potential in a scene, being able to think beyond the intrinsic beauty of a scene to consideration of how it might make a photograph, an intuitive sense of “what is right” visually, the ability to apply some objective thought on top of the intuition, and other things in a list that is too long to recount completely.

I would like to share some of the thinking that went into photographing one particular scene earlier this summer.

“Island and Trees, Tuolumne River” — Trees grow on a small ,rocky island in the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park

Back in mid-July I experienced a special evening in the Tuolumne Meadows Sierra Nevada of Yosemite National Park. It was special for many reasons — some photographic and some not, but even the non-photographic reasons helped put my mind and my senses in the right place to make photographs. I had arrived and set up camp, taken care of camp chores, and finally headed out for late-afternoon and evening photography. I pulled off the road to take a look at a possible subject, and by remarkable coincidence found myself parked behind two good friends who were there for much the same reason. We joined forces and headed of to a nearby area that seemed promising. In an even more remarkable coincidence, partway there two more friends showed up, also there for the same purpose! Something about hiking off into a beautiful landscape with like-minded friends seems to heighten my awareness.

We followed the Tuolumne River and soon its angle of descent began to increase slightly as its channel narrowed and became more rocky.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

The Landing

August 3, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This photograph has appeared here at my website and in subsequent social media posts already, but merely as an example in a post I shared about some slightly technical matters related to a camera I use. (More on that in a moment.) Since I feel like the photograph stands not only as an example of how a lens and a camera work, but also as a photograph, this time I’m sharing it for the latter reason. We had spent a couple of days in the Monterey and Big Sur area, photographing along that spectacular coastline, and now we were headed home. We decided to work our say north along the coast, eventually turning inland just south of San Francisco.

Just before that homeward turn we passed a small, rocky island just a few yards off the actual coast, and I realized that it was covered with many scores of brown pelicans. I love photographing these birds, and it is somewhat unusual to see so many in one place, so we stopped and walked out to the bluff to make some photographs. The light was challenging since it was coming from almost directly behind the birds — but in this case that worked well as there is a light fringe around the bird, some light comes through its wing feathers, and additional light reflects back up from surf and rocks as this pelican lands. Oh, and that technical article? I made this photograph with a pretty unusual “birding” setup — the 50.6MP Canon EOS 5Ds R with a 100-400mm zoom lens with a 1.4x teleconverter attached!

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.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Video Surveillance

August 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Warning sign on a doorway to an interior space, Chinatown, San Francisco

When doing street photography I tend to “switch modes” as I photograph — one moment I might focus on people as individuals or in groups, and then my attention may shift to the “urban landscape,” the shapes and angles of the buildings and roads and sidewalks and more. At night there is always one more element, the unusual effects of artificial light on the scene. The light can be wildly diverse: Greenish from fluorescent lamps, yellow from sodium vapor, warm and saturated from tungsten, almost like daylight though perhaps cooler from LEDs, and occasionally the colors of dusk or the moon.

LED lighting, while wonderfully efficient, is not so wonderful for night photography. Since it mirrors the color balance of daylight so closely it takes away all of those color shadings. Some times it almost makes a night photograph look like day! I made this photograph shortly after I met up with a group of other photographers to walk through this section of San Francisco. At first I was focused in small things — windows, doorways, colorful business signs. As we descended one side street we passed this somewhat nondescript building, but in the nighttime light the interior glowed with an oddly colored light.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Couple, Night

August 1, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A couple out for the night in San Francisco

Although it is not particularly apparent in this photograph, one of the things I like about photographing at night is the way that the darkness, lit by multiple artificial light sources, becomes magical. You’ll never see shadows like those on the wall behind this couple in sunlight! This light, and the responses to the night of the people who are out and about, make the nighttime environment very different from the daytime world, and places that might be mundane in daylight can become special at night.

This must have been a quick and spontaneous photograph… because I don’t even remember making it, much less precisely where I was! I think I may have been along Grant Street somewhere below Chinatown and getting closer to Union Square. In all likelihood, I saw the two of them and quickly lifted the camera to make an exposure and kept walking. I love the expression on the woman’s face.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

All posts by G Dan Mitchell

A Photograph Exposed: One Subject, Two Compositions

The Landing

Video Surveillance

Couple, Night

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.