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: Northern California

Marin Hills Fog

Image November 19, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pacific ocean fog drifts among forested ridges north of San Francisco.

This is a reworking/rethinking of an older photograph from 2013. The previous interpretation was black and white — at that time I was shying away from cloudy, foggy images with a blue cast, but I’ve come to accept and like them now. (Going to black and white is often an attractive option when I can’t quite see how to make it work in color.) Somewhat unusual for me, I also may have darkened some elements of this version of the image. Perhaps a bit of darkness seems appropriate in this time of sheltering-in-place…

I made the photograph on a quick day trip across the Golden Gate Bridge and a ways north up the coast. My recollection is that I followed coastal roads up to about Stinson Beach, stopped there to grab a a bite, and then decided to take a hillier route back home. It reached a sufficient elevation to get me up onto the shoulder of a ridge where I was above the bank of fog extending back out over the Pacific Ocean.

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.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature

Mountains, Lake, Autumn Sky

Image November 18, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Luminous autumn atmosphere above California mountains and lake.

While this may not seem like a typical “fall photograph,” that is how I’m describing it here. Allow me to explain. For decades I have been intrigued by autumn light — perhaps even longer than I’ve been attentive to fall foliage colors. Many years ago I recognized that there was something different about it, though I could not quite put my finger on it. Although I still don’t claim to fully understand it, something (or some things) change in the the autumn atmosphere in my part of the world — something about the luminous quality of the slightly hazy atmosphere, likely complemented by the lower angle of the sun creates an unmistakable effect.

On the day I made this photograph I had arrived before dawn in California’s Great Central Valley to visit some favorite locations and subjects. It was early (perhaps too early) in the season for them, so after enjoying a morning there I eventually decided to head home early, not sticking around until sunset. As a result I passed this location in the early afternoon instead of in the dark… and I could not resist stopping to make a few photographs.

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Twin Leaves

Image November 17, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Continuing the countdown to the end of this year’s batch of Eastern Sierra fall aspen color, here is another vertical format close-up of a pair of beautiful leaves, photographed in the soft light of a colorful grove still in the morning shadows of a nearby ridge. This soft light filled in the shadows, lowered the contrast, and produced lovely saturated colors.

These leaves, here mostly positioned against a background of very out of focus trees with a few leaves around the edge, are illustrative of what I found during by brief fall color foray this year — a whole lot of great color and more reds and oranges than I usually encounter.

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Backlit Aspen Leaves

Image November 16, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

At this point I now appear to be down to just four more of my 2020 autumn aspen color photographs from the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and all of them are up-close photographs of just a few leaves like this one. As I have written previously, my opportunities to get to the Sierra to photograph the aspens this fall were limited by pandemic-related travel issue and by the historically bad wildfires in California. However, on my brief visit I encountered really wonderful color, some of the best I’ve seen in years — and in the end I came back with more photographs than I would have expected from such a short visit.

Almost all of this year’s close-up leaf photographs were made during a short, slow ramble through a single grove that I’ve visited for years. It is a place where I often stop to photograph the smaller elements of the autumn scene, though I managed to arrive just in time for a very special color display this season, with abundant leaves in every possible variation of aspen color. The intention underlying the composition of this photograph was to highlight the two mostly-red leaves and to contrast them with the out-of-focus mass of yellower leaves in the background.