I had the opportunity to join Tim Baskerville and a great group of night photographers at Mare Island Naval Shipyard again last night. I had no idea there were so many folks doing night photography in the Bay Area – there must have been close to 30 photographers. Clearly Tim is the focal point for this group, nearly everyone there had been introduced to night photography through one of his classes or workshops. Visit The Nocturnes web site for more information.

We began at 2:00 in the afternoon with a daytime tour of the island. While it is now undergoing redevelopment (i.e. – real estate development) there are still vast portions of the island that are filled with old military and industrial sites and which make compelling photographic subjects.

After gathering to review participants’ photographs and then share pizza, the group’s evening photographic activities began. Below is the first photo I made, an image of the icon Mare Island smokestack shot in the last light of the day.

… I have a suggestion for Canon in re the “big” 20D/30D/40D question. (You know, the one causing untold neverending shuddupshuddupSHUDDUP existential anguish all over every Canon forum on the ‘net….)

The suggestion: drop it.

That’s right. Drop it altogether. Why does Canon need a camera in between the XTi (400D) and the 5D, anyway? Answer: maybe it doesn’t.

I was in Los Angeles last weekend for something at UCLA. More accurately, I drove my son to something at UCLA.

My plan was to drop him off for his event and then drive to the Getty Museum to do some photography. I’ve been there a few times and I’m intrigued by the architecture and the light. I had some particular shot ideas in mind, mostly involving low-angle afternoon sunlight. However, things don’t always go as planned… It was raining.

I had just managed to reconsider my goals and develop some ideas about rainy, cloudly shots at the Getty when I found out that I would not have time to get over there and back to meet my son. So, instead, I ended up with about an hour and a half to wander about at UCLA in the rain.

I started in the sculpture garden at the north end of campus and took a few shots there – nothing that seemed to go anywhere though. Then I wandered over to one of the older buildings housing, among other things, an espresso shop. I killed a few minutes there and then left slowly. First I noticed a very interesting set of stairs between this building and an adjacent structure – hopefully I’ll get a photo or two out of that. Then I saw this empty patio with interesting lines and contrasts between the white table tops and chairs, dark colored tiles, and the black legs of the chairs and tables.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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Last weekend I was descending from Mission Peak – in the eastern hills of the San Francisco Bay Area – when I passed a hiker who noticed my photography gear. I think the tripod on the back of the pack tends to give me away… ;-)

He asked, “Did you get any good pictures.” I answered, “I hope so.” To which he replied, “I assume you don’t use digital.”

Now I sort of wish I had pursued that thread. I wonder what he meant? Did he assume that “real photographers” (if that’s what I looked like to him) wouldn’t fall for that new fangled digital stuff? Was he a photographer himself?

He didn’t say much when I replied, “Yes, I do. I switched to digital and I can’t imagine going back.”

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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

Last week I was contacted by a representative of a cosmetics firm in the UK about using an old image of some dry grasses that I had shot several years ago. It appears that she had found this image on one of my sites and recognized that a narrow vertical crop of a portion of the shot would work for a poster they were designing.

Their plan was for the image to fill the left edge of a poster that would be 1.5 meters high. Graphically, it made a lot of sense – the mock-up they sent to me looked quite nice. However, there was a problem.

The original photo was made on one of my first digital cameras. Unfortunately, not only was it limited to 4 megapixel resolution but it stored images in .jpeg format rather than RAW. The .jpeg format does not retain all original image information and it introduces (in most cases) compression distortions which, while not an issue for viewing small on-screen images, are quite ugly when enlarged.

Suspecting that the image quality would not be sufficient for what they had in mind but hoping that use on a poster might not require an absolutely sharp image, I sent them a full size copy to consider.

They were disappointed. I was disappointed. There was no way it was going to work.

To be honest, obtaining an extremely sharp image that will be cropped and then enlarged to 1.5 meters high would take fairly special gear. Medium format might work; a view camera would be better.

It so happened that last weekend I was back at the same place where I took the original 4 megapixel image a few years back. This time I set up the tripod and took a few similar images in RAW mode on my 8 megapixel camera. A few sample crops are shown at right.

Image information: Three Grass Photos. August 28, 2005. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
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