Category Archives: Photographs: Night

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Night

Evening Grove

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Evening Grove
A grove of old trees in late-autumn evening light

Evening Grove. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A grove of old trees in late-autumn evening light.

This is the second of several photographs that resulted from going to some local holiday festivities — a big garden and mansion decked out in holiday lights and more… but it sure doesn’t look like a holiday scene! After we arrived and parked our car we had to walk to the main facilities and along the way we passed this old grove. In the fading light (somewhat darker than the rendition in the photograph) it had a quality that was somewhere between slightly ominous and simply quiet and dark.

Typically I would probably use a tripod for a photograph like this one, but since our main reason for going to this event wasn’t necessarily to make photographs I did not have one, so I cranked up the ISO and held the camera very still!

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: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Brick Wall And Tree, Night

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Brick Wall And Tree, Night. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved. DescriptionNight photograph of a gnarled tree growing up an old brick wall. Believe it or not, this emerged from a foray to make Christmas photographs. We made arrangements to visit a local place that has an old mansion, extensive grounds, and remarkable gardens, all decorated for the holiday season. We timed our visit for right around sunset so that we would have a variety of conditions for photographing Christmas lights and the background building and gardens. In fact, I did make some more traditional seasonal photographs — people illuminated by Christmas lights and similar. But then I saw this wall with the twisted and gnarled tree growing along its surface, illuminated by a few bare bulbs overhead — and I went into the more traditional night photographer mode. Photographing at night often profoundly transforms the mood of a subject, and that is certainly true in this case. In the daytime you might think of this as a lovely old, weathered wall with a tree. But to my eyes, at night it takes on a darker and possibly even ominous character. 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 | Facebook | Email Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.
Night photograph of a gnarled tree growing up an old brick wall.

Brick Wall And Tree, Night. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of a gnarled tree growing up an old brick wall.

Believe it or not, this emerged from a foray to make Christmas photographs. We made arrangements to visit a local place that has an old mansion, extensive grounds, and remarkable gardens, all decorated for the holiday season. We timed our visit for right around sunset so that we would have a variety of conditions for photographing Christmas lights and the background building and gardens. In fact, I did make some more traditional seasonal photographs — people illuminated by Christmas lights and similar.

But then I saw this wall with the twisted and gnarled tree growing along its surface, illuminated by a few bare bulbs overhead — and I went into the more traditional night photographer mode. Photographing at night often profoundly transforms the mood of a subject, and that is certainly true in this case. In the daytime you might think of this as a lovely old, weathered wall with a tree. But to my eyes, at night it takes on a darker and possibly even ominous character.

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 | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Moonrise, San Francisco

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Moonrise, San Francisco
The autumn moon rises above San Francisco’s Transamerica building

Moonrise, San Francisco. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The autumn moon rises above San Francisco’s Transamerica building.

Late autumn and early winter are great times to do street photography, in my opinion. I suppose that I’m biased in that one of my objectives is to be able to photograph in the twilight and early evening hours, when a bit of remaining ambient natural light combines with artificial lighting to produce the feeling of night in photographs without looking all details to the darkness. (I also like the fact that I can photograph at night… and still catch a train back home from San Francisco at a reasonable hour!)

On this November visit I had arrived in The City in the early afternoon, doing the usual sorts of street photography in the more traditional daylight. As sunset approached I headed north through the Financial District, and eventually wandered up Columbus before reversing course and heading back to the south through the Chinatown District. (Main reasons I like to photograph there at night include abundant and colorful lighting, along with relatively narrow streets that let me get close to subjects.) As I began my walk south into this area I looked up and was surprised to see the rising moon sitting next to the Transamerica building.

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 | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Night, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Chinatown Store At Night

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Chinatown Store At Night
A woman walks past a San Francisco Chinatown District store at night

Chinatown Store At Night. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman walks past a San Francisco Chinatown District store at night.

My original idea was to render this as a color photograph, largely because the wild and bright colors in these stores attract me to the subject. But as I worked with the image in post it kept whispering, “I want to be monochrome…” In the end I decided to agree with that little voice. I like the noire quality of black and white in this case, and it also takes me back to my roots, when my early photography was all black and white… and done with film.

A photograph like this one poses several challenges, ranging from aesthetic to technical. The fill list of them is too long to treat fully in this post, but I’ll share a few. An aesthetic challenge comes from trying to include moving figures in such night photographs — both due to the difficulty in stopping their motion in low light, and because such figures don’t always appear in the. scene. My approach is often to find the “landscape” first and then wait for the “wildlife” (people) to arrive and populate the scene. It often requires both patience and multiple photographs to get it to work, and it doesn’t always succeed. The technical challenges are mostly about light. There are quite a few, but I’ll just mention some related to dynamic range and the locations of light sources. The brightest light in this scene is obviously coming from the bright interior of the store. But much of the scene is actually in near darkness, and the human subjects are mostly backlit. There is just a bit of ambient light coming from the lights on nearby businesses, but it isn’t nearly as strong as that coming from the shop. So I expose for that brightest source, with the intention of restoring shadow details in post. That isn’t always easy, but today’s cameras give us a ton of latitude for removing shadow detail.

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 | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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