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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Trees, Sierra Rain

Image December 23, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees and afternoon rain in the Sierra Nevada backcountry.

Photography in the rain is a challenge. Concerns range from small things (drops of water on the lens) to potential catastrophe (water damaging the electronics), with a range of intermediate issues, not the least of which is the photographer’s comfort! The challenges are compounded in the backcountry, where staying warm and relatively dry are both challenging and critical. There’s no warm car or motel room to retreat to!

After being mostly stuck in our tents during 24 hours or rainy weather, a few brief breaks were enough to coax us outside for photography and, also important, to stretch our legs. Since the rain hadn’t really stopped, I carried my backup camera and no tripod so that I could more easily deal with the inevitable showers. Speaking which, I made this photograph in the middle of one of them, managing to make a short series of photographs of these noble and tall trees growing out of a rocky rise.

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.

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sunset Fog and Clouds

Image December 22, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sunset fog and clouds above an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake after a storm.

As I do my year-end traverse of photographs from the preceding year I often find things that were left behind. This is one of those photographs. It comes from a weeklong backcountry photographic sojourn in the Eastern Sierra with a group of friends/photographers. We set up a basecamp and photographed the heck out of our surroundings during that week, devoting more time to the area than we could on a typical point-to-point backpacking trip.

Since I’ve told the story here before, I’ll keep it short — but we lived through the worst summer rain storm I’ve experienced in the Sierra. Twenty-four hours later the storm finally cleared late in the day, and this bit of late sunset light lit up the layers of clouds and fog to the east. It was an astonishing evening, and my photographs individually contain only parts of the remarkable whole.

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Kitchen Tools #1

Image December 21, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Indeed, I made more than one photograph in the kitchen this week. Will this be a new stylistic direction in my photography? Stay tuned and find out! Like yesterday’s photograph, this subject was on the kitchen counter. I needed something to test out a new camera with a macro lenses, no tiny bugs were handy, so here we are.

As I pondered these two kitchen photographs it stuck me that the patterns, especially with all of the soft blur in the images, reminded me of some close-up photograph s I have made of grasses and similar plants.

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.

Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures

Kitchen Tools #2

Image December 20, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

When looking for subjects to test (otherwise know as “get to know”) a new camera or lens, it is amazing what things one can find to photograph! This week I’m trying to get up to speed on a new camera — more about that below — and how it works with some lenses I already have. On this evening I slapped a macro lens on the thing and headed to the kitchen to photograph… a whisk, blender blades, coffee cups, and others stuff that was lying around.

It is important to me to both understand objectively how my camera equipment functions and to develop an intuitive familiarity with it. The former helps me make smart decisions, and the latter is very important in the field, where I don’t want to get stuck wondering how the gear works. In this case, the new equipment is a Fujifilm X-T5 that I got to upgrade from the XPro2 that I’ve been using for my “small camera” photography for the past few years. For this photograph and a few others like it I put the Fujifilm 80mm macro on the camera.

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

All posts by G Dan Mitchell

Trees, Sierra Rain

Sunset Fog and Clouds

Kitchen Tools #1

Kitchen Tools #2

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