Category Archives: Morning Musings

Morning Musings for 8/30/14

Today a few thoughts, in no particular order…

California Surfers, Winter
California Surfers, Winter

The photo – I made the photograph attached to this post a few years back on a winter day along the California coast. It is here today for those who
a) want to see something non-urban (see below)
b) join me in looking ahead to the cooler season and its interesting weather and light
c) love the California coast.
d) share in “all of the above.”

You can read more about this photograph here. (As always, a big “thank you!” to the unknown surfers who walked across just the right spot on the beach at just the right time on just the right day in just the right conditions. ;-)

Articles at the blog – In addition to sharing my photography, I share a lot of written material here at the blog: technique, locations, equipment reviews, and more. Some — but not yet all — of these articles are listed on my Articles page. Have at it!

Urban photography at the blog — The urban and street photography thread is going to continue for just a bit longer — Chicago is up next. For those of you who enjoy such things, thanks! For those of you who prefer the landscape and nature photography, it will be back. (And, like me, you might even enjoy the look at different subjects from the usual — I find that looking outside of my favorites often helps me see more clearly.)

Projects — I have some upcoming plans to get back into the wild world relatively soon. This should, among other things, lead to new landscape photographs. And the need for a shower.

Aspens and fall color  – Fall colors are arriving very soon. In fact, hints are already about if you look in the right places. Here in California the aspen color should begin in about another month or so, though in this drought period things may not evolve in quite the typical ways. I’ll have more to say about how I view this season’s prospects toward the middle of September. (For now, read more about Sierra Nevada fall color here: Sierra Nevada Fall Color Season – Coming Sooner Than You Think)

Morning Musings – “Morning Musings” comprise a series of mostly off-the-cuff posts on various subjects — whatever comes to mind at the time I write them. They may appear as frequently as every day or sometimes they not appear for a while.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographing Icons — Pluses and Minuses (Morning Musings 8/29/14)

Autumn Leaves, Reflection of a Monolith
Autumn Leaves, Reflection of a Monolith

When it comes to photographing “icons” (the famous things that everyone photographs when they visit certain locations) the disagreements can become impassioned and the points of view range from “Don’t do it!” to “That’s why I go!” After replying to a question about photographing a particular icon (Zabriskie Point in Death Valley) recently I thought a bit about how the answer to the “should I photograph them?” question is a bit trickier than either “yes” or “no.” So, here’s an off-the-cuff listing of some things to consider.

Pluses – Reasons to go ahead and photograph them:

  • If you are new to a location, you have to start somewhere. Even if your goal is to eventually develop a deeper and more thorough understanding of a place you will likely need to discover even the most obvious things about the location first, and your knowledge should include these elements as well.
  • There is usually a good reason that an icon has achieved iconic status. If you haven’t seen them before, they are not the “same old same old” to you, so go ahead and enjoy their newness. (I was reminded of this a few years back when I visited Arches National Park for the first time. I had not studied the place at all before going, and my response to the place was a very strong one — even though I didn’t know that I was, at least in some cases, responding to elements that are well-known.)
  • While you are very unlikely to create a wholly new and original photograph of a subject that has been photographed perhaps millions for times (Tunnel View at Yosemite, anyone?), at a certain point in your photographic development there is something to be said for trying to understand the ways in which others have photographed icons and the means (technical and aesthetic) by which they created their images. Consider it a form of distant apprenticeship.
  • Sometimes it is possible to photograph an icon in ways that are new and fresh. This often depends on being able to see past the obvious and on being sensitive to the times when something really special happens with them. It is extremely challenging to create a new way of seeing very familiar things, but it is sometimes possible.
  • If you are very serious about this photography thing, it isn’t a bad idea at all to have  some images of iconic subjects in your catalog for practical reasons.
  • In the right situation, in the right place, at the right icon, on the right day, there can be social value in being in such places. I once photographed Horsetail Fall on a beautiful winter evening in Yosemite Valley, and soon realized that the outcome wasn’t so much going to be photographic as it was realizing the miracle of joining hundreds of people from around the globe who gathered in mid-winter in snowy meadows to gaze upwards toward a high rock face in the hope of glimpsing a transitory and rare effect of water and light and rock.

Minuses – Reasons to be cautious about “icon fever,” and a few thoughts about alternatives

  • It is extremely unlikely that you are going to produce a photograph that is new or special beyond its potential to recall your personal experience of being there. The best photographs of such subjects are rarely made in typical conditions, but instead in truly exceptional light and atmosphere at just the right moment on just the right day in just the right season.
  • There is a risk of falling into the trap of “capturing” trophies — traveling from place to place with the goal being primarily or exclusively to bag shots of those icons. I would argue that this, in and of itself, ultimately is not going to be very rewarding.
  • Too much focus on icons that distract you from other wonderful and beautiful things in the vicinity of the icons.
  • I’ve seen people disappointed that the prospective iconic shot did not work in the light and other conditions that they had to work with — while that very light and those conditions were making other nearby subjects beautifully photographable.
  • Focusing too much on the goal of reproducing the view you already know from other photographs can blind you to other ways of seeing that very thing. What else is in the scene? What smaller element of the scene might make a photograph?
  • By focusing on the things that are iconic, it is possible to miss the fact that great photographs are often less about the objective existence and form of those things, and more about how we see.

Photographing icons has its place. Almost all of us have done it and almost all of us will continue to do so. But if you are at a point where that is your primary goal, I urge you to grow your photography by thinking outside of that box.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment below.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Foregoing Seeing in Order to Capture (Morning Musing 8/27/2014)

Photographing Van Gogh
Capturing Van Gogh

This “morning musing” may sound just a little grumpy, but there you go.

On a recent trip through Chicago and New York City I had lots opportunities for people watching, an endlessly fascinating activity in big cities. Since many folks we say, especially in the most popular areas, were tourists (like us!) there were many people making photographs of their experience. That is a Good Thing — like most everyone, I treasure old photographs of such family activities, and I try to remember to make a few of them myself.

However, I also saw a frequent occurrence that makes me a bit sad for some of these travelers. Confronted with the opportunity for an experience, a surprising number pass up on that opportunity and instead settle for a record proving that — what? — they saw the thing or that they stood near it.

The gallery holding Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting, one of the most famous and familiar paintings today. (The gallery also contains a lot of other very wonderful work of the same calibre, for sure.) Before spending some time looking at the painting and trying to understand it, feel it, and fix in my mind many of its details, I spent some time watching the other people who were also there to view it. There were, not surprisingly, all sorts of responses — ranging from apparent boredom to rapt engagement with this work.

Among people with cameras of some sort, two ways of responding to the painting puzzled and continue to puzzle me.

The first is the apparent compulsion to make a smartphone image of the thing and then quickly move on. Actually, this goes a bit beyond puzzling me and almost leaves me stunned. On the practical level, if one really wants a photograph of the painting to review later it is trivially easy to find a really good one on the web or in a book, an image that will be far better than a handheld smartphone snap. On the affective level, it seems almost sad to see people with the opportunity to stand within feet of one of the world’s great works of visual art choose to raise a smartphone and press a virtual button rather than experiencing the actual thing.

The second is just plain bizarre. In these cases, less frequent than the first but still not uncommon, someone (mom or dad in many cases) sends other family members up next to the painting and has them pose, smiling awkwardly as the rest of us look away from the painting to watch them, for a snapshot that shows that they did, indeed, stand in the vicinity of a great painting and photograph themselves before moving on…

(To answer the inevitable and entirely appropriate question, Did I photograph the painting? — No.)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

What’s With All the Street Photography? (Morning Musings for 8/26/14)

Since many of you may be more familiar with my landscape photography, it wouldn’t surprise me if a few of you are wondering what has happened? Where did it go? What’s up with all the street photography? How does this all connect? Does it connect at all?

Urban Life, Manhattan
Urban Life, Manhattan

First, the landscape photography hasn’t disappeared and more of it will return here soon. In fact, some upcoming landscape photography projects should generate quite a bit of that sort of work once again before very long.

Second, let me share a bit more about the recent (and upcoming) focus on urban, street, and travel photography.

  • One reason is practical. During the first part of this summer, scheduling and other issues conspired in ways that I ended up spending much less time in wild places than usual. To some extent, I regret having been unable to make it to the Sierra in the past couple of months, but on the other hand my favorite Sierra season is just beginning and I’ll be there quite a bit very soon.
  • While I did not travel to those places, I did travel to other places with interesting urban subjects. Most notably I spent two weeks traveling to Chicago and New York City, and I was able to photograph a lot in the latter location for over a week. Yes, you can expect to see a lot more New York City photographs!
  • While I obviously have a deep and long-standing connection to the natural world, especially that of the western United States, I also love cities. While it is unlikely that I’ll never live in a place like Manhattan, such urban areas fascinate and energize me, and my instinct is to photograph them.
  • Photography is photography — it isn’t just landscape photography, or wildlife photography, or portraits, or street photography, or sports photography, and it certainly isn’t limited to certain locations or subjects. I see almost all subjects as potential photographs, and I see many of the same underlying elements and concepts and structures in a wide range of subjects. In my view, there is a clear connection between how I see natural landscape and urban landscapes, between nature photography and street photography, and much more.
  • Shooting (and viewing) photography outside of my personal photographic comfort zone helps me see and understand all photographic subjects more clearly and more intensely. I’m convinced that my landscape photography experience informs my street photography, and that shooting street can make me see the landscape in new and interesting ways.

Whether you agree or not, I hope that you’ll find something interesting in this “different” work that is likely to appear quite a bit over the next few weeks. And if not… autumn is coming, I’m heading into the field to shoot landscapes again very soon, and you can look forward to new work of the more familiar sort again before long!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.