Patricia Emerson Mitchell and I are presenting a Silicon Valley Open Studios event this weekend. Here’s a video preview of our open studio.
We have many of our prints set up for viewing and purchase, with some excellent discounts available. We’ll also have a few related items, including signed copies of my fall color book and Patty’s cards.
We’ll be open on Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22 from 11:00 AM until 5:00PM. Details are available at the Silicon Valley Open Studios website, or by contacting us, including by posting a comment here. We’re looking forward to seeing you!
UPDATE: Thank you to all who visited on Saturday. It was good to see old friends and make new ones, and several prints found brand new homes! Today is the second of this two-day event, and we’ll be open again from 11:00AM until 5:00PM.
Over a decade ago I photoshopped this fake image as part of a 2011 April Fool’s Day joke post at this website. Working from an iPhone snap, I flipped some digits on the then-crazy prices on the sign to make it look like the price was almost $10/gallon. I fooled quite a few people — more than I expected. Even more ironic, the photoshopped fake prices were picked up by right wing disinformation bloggers and turned into a fake news meme about California gas prices. (I found out when the media contacted me for interviews about it.)
Here we are, approaching April Fool’s Day 2022, and the price at this always-outrageously-priced gas station is now actually higher than the then-unbelievable price in my fake photograph! An online gas price tracker that I checked just listed $9.99/ gallon there!
Yes, gas prices are high. No, they are notthathigh, even in California. I would never buy gas at this price-gouging station. It usually has the highest price in the state, and this is the worst season for pricing there. I’d at least drive to Stovepipe Wells, where park concessionaire price controls make it $1 or $2 cheaper. Better yet, drive across the border to Nevada if your plans take you out that way. And tank up on your way into the park!
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.
Lesser sandhill cranes rise from a wetland pond into foggy Central Valley winter sky.
Although this isn’t glorious dawn light, it is rather typical of what you’ll find in places like this one on a late-winter morning around sunrise — some combination of fog, a bit of haze, and (on this morning) some high clouds. All of this combines to produce an atmosphere suggesting cold, damp, stillness, and quiet. (Though the cries of a few thousand birds may interfere with the “quiet” part of that.)
As the first light begins, the sandhill cranes are mostly standing in shallow wet areas, presumably for protection from predators. As sunrise approaches they begin to become more active, and gradually small groups begin to take to the sky and fly off to distant locations. Unlike geese, who often take off by the thousands, the cranes tend to depart in groups of two or three, and rarely more than a dozen. The hints of their imminent departure can be subtle, and I often get barely any warning before they take off. Among the birds in this photograph you can spot individuals at almost every stage of departure, from standing and waiting through fully airborne.
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.
For some time I have been thinking of writing about a particular challenge that comes with doing creative work. It is a complicated subject, but sometimes writing about such a topic “primes the pump” for further consideration, so in this post I’m going to take a first — and almost stream-of-consciousness — look at the issue.
(As such, don’t expect a complete coverage here. That would take a book. Or several books. And I’m not about to write them! Also, I’ve updated this post by adding a wonderful reference to the subject through the perspective of composer John Adams.)
The day after writing this I read an article about composer John Adams, in which he responds to essentially the same question that I’m dealing with here:
While many things may be gained from experience, Adams says he is sot sure if the very act of composing gets any easier with age.
”It depends on the day you ask me. Today, I could say it’s very difficult. But I can say that the one benefit of growing older is that you have a personal history of your own struggles. “
“If you have fought the battle in the past, when you have a block, you know it likely will not last, if you keep working. When you’re thirty years old, or twenty five years old, and you have a block, you think that’s the end of the world. You just can’t imagine success for yourself. So that’s the only thing I can say.”
It has been my good fortune to live and work in and around two creative fields: music and photography. (For those don’t know, my academic background is in music and I had a long career as a college music faculty member.) I have had plenty of opportunities to observe and experience the creative life, with all of its rewards and challenges. It is the relationship between some of the rewards and challenges that will figure in what follows.
If you do creative work, it is almost certain that you hope to experience the intense “high” that may come with it, a kind of intensity and exhilaration. Perhaps you have felt that in the work of others and you hope the work you create will evoke that response. You want to feel the sense of competence and even transcendence that can come from successful work. Perhaps you want to be like creatives who have influenced you.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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