Category Archives: Photographs: People

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: People, Photographs: Photographers, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Photographer Scot Miller

Image Leave a comment
Photographer Scot Miller
Photographer Scot Miller looking for the next photograph in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Photographer Scot Miller. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Photographer Scot Miller looking for the next photograph in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Scot is one of a group of photographers I photograph with in the Sierra just about every summer. Our habit is to make our way into a suitable backcountry location (hiking, with pack animal support), set up a base camp, and then photograph the heck out of the surrounding area for a week or more. These trips are a pleasure and very productive for a range of reasons. By staying in one place for a time we have the opportunity to really get to know the terrain and light — we can discover a subject and then revisit it to improve our vision of this subject or to work with it in different light or conditions. And because we remain in a base camp and hike out each day to make photographs, our focus can be entirely on photography — unlike on pack trips when daily travel can reduce the opportunities for photography to mostly morning and evening.

Most to the time we photograph individually — making a photograph in these conditions and of these subjects is, for most people, a solitary activity. Each of us follows his own intuition and experience to investigate and photograph. Yet, we aren’t truly alone. Each day we spend hours as a group in camp during those midday hours when the photography is usually not as appealing. And when we are out making photographs it isn’t unusual at all to run into one another. That’s pretty much what happened here. Scot and I found ourselves in the same area, then went different directions, but not before I made a photograph of him looking over the nearby terrain.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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

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

Photographs: France, Photographs: People, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Couple With Roller Bags

Image Leave a comment
Couple With Roller Bags
A couple of tourists pulling roller bags on a Paris sidewalk

Couple With Roller Bags. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A couple of tourists pulling roller bags on a Paris sidewalk

I photographed this couple in Le Marais, Paris, not far from where we stayed for a few days near the end of August. If I recall correctly it was Friday evening, and I suspect that these folks were just arriving for the weekend. (I could be wrong — perhaps they live here and were returning from travels.) Their appearance in this scene was fortuitous. I had noticed the monumental weathered wall in the background. I was intrigued, but it hardly seemed like a photograph by itself. But with people in the frame such a surface can add interest.

Being a relatively light travel — at least when traveling by air — I can also identify a bit with these folks. This European trip was nearly six weeks long, yet we managed to restrict ourselves to carry-on luggage — one backpack-style bag plus a smaller “camera” bag that fit under airline seats. (We cheated a bit, too. We did ship some more formal clothes ahead of time for one special event that we attended in Germany.) Even with our relatively light loads, sometimes at the end of a day of travel those bags just… weigh you down. These folks look like they just might be having a similar moment…

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 |
Email

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

Photographs: Austria, Photographs: People, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Child In The Street

Image Leave a comment
Child In The Street
A toddler walks in the street in front of arches, Vienna

Child In The Street. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A toddler walks in the street in front of arches, Vienna

There are probably multiple ways to think about this photograph. It is, obviously, a photograph of a small child in a roadway. Is the child actually alone? Why is he/she in the street? Why did I make a photograph rather than running to protect the child? I’m not going to answer those questions here — partly because I think it is better to let the viewer wonder, and partly because there is no scandal in any of the actual answers. But questions remain? What IS this child doing? What, if anything, does this mean?

On a practical note, this is an example of the sort of photograph that would be pretty much impossible to make using the equipment or techniques of my landscape and similar photography. A scene like this happens instantaneously, usually with little or no warning, and it is gone almost as soon as you see it. For this sort of thing I work with a small handheld camera with a prime lens, which lets me respond to such scenes almost without taking (much) time for conscious thought.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 |
Email

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

Photographs: France, Photographs: People, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Woman and Clock

Image Leave a comment
Woman and Clock
A woman gazes through the portal of a Musee D’Orsay clock towards Paris

Woman and Clock. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman gazes toward the Paris skyline through the portal of a Musee D’Orsay clock

I can tell something of a story on us regarding the Musee d’Orsay. On a previous visit to Paris we were trying to get to various specific locations including a few museums. However, we can be a bit “seat of the pants” when it comes to wandering around in such cities — rather than making specific plans we tend to decide things on the spot and/or wander around and see what we find. We knew we wanted to visit this museum, but it wasn’t until later on that visit that we made it there. We paid our admission, went inside, and discovered that we had perhaps 90 minutes left before it closed. Needless to say, we moved very quickly through sections of the place and missed a ton of stuff.

This time we wanted to go back and spend a more reasonable amount of time there. And we did. We got there in time to see a good portion of the marvelous exhibits. At one point we were getting hungry, and we ran into a restaurant on one of the upper floors and decided to stop. Overlooking the restaurant was a clock like what you see here. I was very confused. I knew I had seen “the” clock briefly on the previous visit, but I didn’t recall a restaurant… so I chalked up to, “they must have remodeled things and installed this restaurant by the clock. ” We finished eating, went back to visiting the exhibits, and eventually worked our way to the far end of the floor… where we found the other clock, the one that I had seen before. Usually there are a ton of people standing in front of the thing — and who can blame them — but for a moment I was able to frame this photograph with a solitary woman standing and looking through the clock’s windows towards the skyline of Paris.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 |
Email

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