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.
Two trash containers in the doorway of a San Francisco building, with “Emergency Exit Only” signs.
So, yes, trash bins in the doorway of a San Francisco business — photographed on one of my street photography walks in The City. I’m tempted to just leave that there with no further explanation.
OK, a few hints. You could just look at it as two trash bins in a doorway — after all, that is what you see here. But if you enjoy such things, you could look at it in a variety of other ways, ranging from the mundane (code violations?) to more metaphorical. Your choice.
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 and Amazon.
Tightly laced tree trunks, Southern Sierra Nevada.
This is an older photograph that has languished in my raw file archives for nearly a decade. Back in 2010 I was on a long Southern Sierra backcountry trip with a group of friends — roughly speaking we made a giant semi-circle around Mount Whitney, starting southeast of that peak and coming out over a week later at a point considerably north. A milestone on this trip was realizing — finally! — that re-climbing that iconic peak is less profitable than spending time in many other equally beautiful places in the Sierra. At several points on this trip we found ourselves in lonely, less-visited spots, and I treasure the trip for that reason. These trees were at one of our campsites, in a location essentially right at timberline.
Everyone’s work habits are unique, but for me it is important to periodically go back and look through older photographs that didn’t “go anywhere” at the time. I inevitably find images that are worth the second look. I’ve often pondered how and why this happens. Among my theories: perhaps I simply moved on to quickly to other projects at the time, possibly I didn’t really understand how to “see” the image, my interests and perspectives have changed. Regardless, this is one reason that I’m hesitant to delete a lot of raw files — all too often I’ve gone back and found something that I was glad I kept!
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 and Amazon.
Morning light on beaches and river delta, Mendocino Bay.
We just returned from a week along the far northern California coast, with a few days in the Mendocino area followed by four more in the Redwood National and State Parks between Eureka/Arcata and Crescent City. Patty and I had several goals on this trip: getting away from the busy and crowded San Francisco Bay Area, visiting foggy redwoods while rhododendrons were in bloom, spending time along the coast, and — of course! — making photographs. We were successful on all counts… except for the fog! I seem to have a special knack for making the fog depart from the redwoods. While this makes the locals very happy, I have yet to encounter the lovely and widely-rumored Redwood National Park fog.
We spent the first two nights in Mendocino, the quaint little village on a peninsula jutting into the Pacific. On the first morning I was up and out the door relatively early, walking out along the northern headlands overlooking Mendocino Bay. Sunrise photography here can be a bit tricky, as the hills to the east obstruct the first light. But wait until the sun clears the forested ridges and add a bit of morning ocean mist and the scene becomes quite lovely. This photograph looks along the shoreline of the bay, past sea stacks and headland cliffs, toward the Big River delta and a Pacific Coast highway bridge.
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 and Amazon.
A flock of sandhill cranes flies beneath dawn clouds.
When I began photographing (mostly) migratory birds in the Western United States I was largely ignorant about what I was seeing. One of my first bird photography forays was essentially an accident. I happened to run into a friend in a coffee stand line one morning and she (who is a true “birder”) happened to say, more or less, “I think you might like to go visit this place I know of.” Given the way I sometimes work, that serendipitous nudge was sufficient to get me to drive a few hours before dawn the following weekend to visit this place I’d never heard of before. I arrived. There were tons of birds. (And I discovered the power of the sound of the birds, too!) I had no idea what I was seeing, but I liked it and I made photographs. I was hooked.
As I started to edge over toward an active compulsion to photograph birds more seriously I began to recall a earlier hints about this world that I had ignored. One was all the way back in a college “natural science” short course, where the prof (who seemed a bit “odd” to me then) went on about snowy egrets (which I mostly ignored) and made us read Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac.” I didn’t fully “get” Leopold’s book at the time, but it planted a seed. (Re-reading it years later I understood more fully the power of Leopold’s vision and his writing, and I recommend the book.) One thing that I DID retain from reading that book was an idea that there was something special about sandhill cranes, which were among the birds that I finally discovered in the real world on that first morning when I acted on my friend’s coffee line suggestion. The birds in this photograph are sandhill cranes, which seem to me increasingly to be magical birds. In fact it is their characteristic cry that is my strongest audio association with the places where wild birds are found. I photographed this group very early in the morning as their trajectory took them below the edge of dawn-tinged clouds.
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 and Amazon.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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