Category Archives: Commentary

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Great Egret, Reflection

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Great Egret, Reflection
A great egret and its reflection in a wetland pond

Great Egret, Reflection. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A great egret and its reflection in a wetland pond

While I don’t know the full extent of their (likely huge) range, these birds are ubiquitous in California. I remember when I first noticed them, many years ago when I was a dedicated cyclist. In those days I commuted to work by bicycle, covering between 30 and 55 miles a day, and portions of my ride always passed creeks and drainage canals. You might miss them speeding past in a car, but on a bicycle I frequently looked into these waterways and spotted these impressively large and nearly pure white birds. As time went on I found them all over the place — they can be found in many agricultural areas, for example, and I have photographed them feeding in kelp beds along the Pacific Ocean shoreline.

In flight they alternate between ungainliness and beauty. They can seem a bit gangly and awkward at times — their take-off can be somewhat awkward, for example. On the other hand they flare their wings beautifully upon landing. I don’t usually go out specifically to photograph the egrets, but sometimes it seems unavoidable since they turn up in so many places. They seem to have somewhat clearly defined boundaries when it comes to human presence. They more or less ignore us until we get too close (though this boundary changes depending upon whether they are feeding or not), but get a bit too close and you can see them “tighten up” and prepare for a sudden take-off, at which point you most often have only the opportunity to photograph them from the back as they depart. This bird had been hunting and seemed a bit more willing than most to let me photograph.

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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Museum Windows, Shadows

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Museum Windows, Shadows
Silhouetted figures, windows, and beams of light, Metropolitan Museum

Museum Windows, Shadows. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Silhouetted figures, windows, and beams of light, Metropolitan Museum

This is a second “take” on a location I photographed between Christmas and New Year’s Day last year, when we spent a week in New York. It was an exceptionally cold week, and on a few days we decided that we really needed to find indoor activities. (On other days we defied the cold and wind and walked all over Manhattan anyway.) One of the reliable options is a visit to a museum, so we headed to the Metropolitan, where we wanted to see the David Hockney show. You can’t see it in this photograph, but the museum was packed with other visitors who were also looking for a warm, indoor option.

We passed through this room twice, on our way to and from a section of the museum with relatively modern art that we wanted to view. This space is really essentially a very wide walkway, though I suspect that it could also be used for exhibits at times. The row of tall windows along the southern wall opened to Central Park and, further away, the Manhattan skyline. Lots of people took advantage of the wide window sills as a place to sit. The resulting effects of light were intriguing — backlit people in a variety of poses, the faint image of the park and city outside, and the alternative effects of shadows and reflections from the bright light streaming through the windows.

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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Commentary, Events, Ideas, News

Heading Home

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For the past week I have been the grateful beneficiary of a Yosemite Renaissance “artist-in-residence” (artist-in-renaissance?) gig in Yosemite National Park. Here are a few brief, or so I hope, thoughts before I pack my vehicle, lock the cabin door, and head back to what passes for civilization.

I am grateful to  Yosemite Renaissance and its director, Jon Bock, for giving me this opportunity. I appreciate your generosity, your belief in my work, and the chance to work uninterrupted and at my own pace for a week in the park.

I made a lot of photographs, though I almost never say too much about the results until I have a chance to work with the images over the next weeks and months. That said, the timing of this visit turned out to be fortuitous — in a season of too-warm temperatures and too-little precipitation, this week has been very cold and snowy! Yosemite in winter conditions are special — mist and flurries among peaks and spires, new snow on forest trees, colors and shapes muted by storms, all sorts of effects of light.

This morning I took a short walk near the cabin where I’ve been staying, and I thought a bit about what I got from this residency. I have come to Yosemite for decades. (My earliest memory is when I was perhaps five or six years old, and I was impressed by the boulders and rushing torrent of the Merced River behind our little El Portal motel.) While I’ve spent lengthy periods in the backcountry, I don’t believe I have ever spent more than two or three successive days in the Valley. With this weeklong visit, the time pressure was off — I could investigate hunches, revisit locations several times, and work slowly and thoughtfully.

This led to another realization this morning. The week produced more than just one week’s worth of photography, and it connects previous experiences to future work. It fills gaps in my experience with the place and lays the groundwork for work to come.

This morning’s hike was an example. I carried camera equipment but made no photographs — the light wasn’t right. But I got to know a new area and spotted a few subjects for future photography, going so far as to consider how I might compose images there and what time of day and season might be ideal. I’ll be back.

Since I started by describing this as a “brief” note, and I’m already pushing the boundaries of “brief,” I’ll stop here, and conclude (for now!) by again expressing my thanks to Yosemite Renaissance.

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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Land And Sea

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Land And Sea
Big Sur coast meets the Pacific Ocean

Land And Sea. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Big Sur coast meets the Pacific Ocean

I live close enough to the Big Sur coastline that I can visit on day trips, and I can visit at times when it is relatively quiet and uncrowded. A winter weekday can be ideal, and right now it is even less busy since the route is still blocked by a giant landscape perhaps fifty miles or so below the Monterey Peninsula.

Most often I prefer to photograph fairly early in the morning, when the light skims down across the coastal hills, creating patterns of shadow and light, or else in the evening, when the warm light of the late-day sun colors the ocean and the hills. But on some almost perfectly clear winter days, perhaps with a few high clouds and some atmospheric haze, the air almost glows and I can photograph right through the middle of the day. This was such a day. The haze and mist, partly atmospheric and party from spray thrown up by surf, accentuated the bluffs and headlands as they dropped into the Pacific, and the brilliant sun made the water so bright that it was difficult to look at it.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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