Building 237, Evening

Building 237, Evening
Building 237, Evening

Building 237, Evening. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on Building 237 at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California

This is one of a pair of buildings that has featured in several of my night photographs at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, where I’ve been photographing after dark for about a decade now. The location is the site of the former and now historic naval ship yard that was the first on the west coast of the United States, being established way back in the 1800s. It was decommissioned in the 1990s, and since that time the facility changed in many ways. Parts of the island are now open space, others have been turned into urban developments, businesses and others are using some of the old buildings and spaces—yet parts of the facility have been retained as a sort of informal historic site.

The buildings in the cluster of which this one is a part are very close to the “historic core” of the ship yard. Although many of the buildings give the appearance of being abandoned, some are in use and all are kept in a sort of state of suspended animation. Almost all of my photography here has been at night, when a diversity of light sources transform it in magical ways. During the day, much of it can seem quite mundane. Buildings that are wildly colorful when lit by brilliantly colorful sodium vapor lights and other colorful light sources often turn out to be quite drab in the day time. On this visit I managed to arrive before sunset, and I headed out to see if the golden hour light might offer some opportunities for a different sort of visual transformation of these buildings, and this one was photographed during the final few minute of daylight.

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.

Conductor George Cleve

Conductor George Cleve
Conductor George Cleve

Conductor George Cleve. San Jose, California. June 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

George Cleve conducts the Symphony Silicon Valley in rehearsal

Bear with me. This may be a long story. I’ll start with some basic facts concerning this photograph. As some of you may know, I have been working on a long-term project to photograph classical musicians. This is related to a sabbatical project at my college, and one goal is to document aspects of the lives and works of classical musicians that might not typically be seen by those who only get to come to see performances. For this purpose, I have been “embedded” with a couple of groups for over a year. It has been a great opportunity, and I’m grateful to the musicians and others who work with them for allowing me a kind of access to their lives and work that they might not afford to just anyone. It helps that I know many of them, that I’m married to one of these musicians, that my academic training is in music, and that I used to perform with people like these. All of that also helps me be sensitive to things that other photographers might not as easily see. (This is a long story in and of itself, and I’ll save that for later.)

The conductor of this concert “set” is George Cleve. His name is not exactly a household word, but his experience and skill and musical sensitivity is of the highest level. My experience with George goes back many years, to a time when he conducted orchestras in which I occasionally played (San Jose Symphony and the Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra) and one for which I served as orchestra stage director for a few years. In a surprising coincidence I even took a conducting class from him when I was an under-graduate music major “back in the day.”

Conductors are not always patient people, and there are many reasons that this can be the case. The work they do is unlike almost any other work that I can imagine. Even though I’ve been around music for many years, I still find it difficult to offer a really good description of the complexity of the role—which includes elements of ring-master, leader, coordinator, passionate interpreter, analytical listener and teacher, and much more. Truly watching a skillful conductor—and preferably not while performing, but instead while your full attention can be on the watching—is an illuminating experience. From the visual perspective of a photographer, the appearance of the conductor is in a continuous state of flux. His or her facial expressions change faster than you can follow, and subtle movements—a quick glance, a hint of a smile, a momentary intensity, a curving motion of the hand—convey things in a fluid way.

But I have one more story about George, and it involves that conducting class. His was an intimidating presence for young music students. I recall him at one of the first classes asking, “You do all have the nine symphonies of Beethoven committed to memory, right?” Wrong! Though we quickly set about trying. (That task takes far longer than a college term!) I recall a day when we were to individually conduct the second movement of the 6th symphony for him. As I remember it, we entered the room alone to face him and conduct as a pianist played a reduction of the score. One after another nervous students entered and soon emerged from the room, often seemingly crushed by the realization of how little they understood what they had to do. It was my turn. I entered and faced him and began to conduct. In my recollection, which is probably no longer completely accurate, he quickly stopped me and said something along the lines of, “No, no, no!” But then, for reasons I never quite understood, he gave me a musical gift that I did not expect and which has remained with me since then. Instead of telling me I was done, he said, “Watch me.” Standing a few feet in front of me and conducting as if the full symphony was where I stood, he put on the full show for me, intensity of expression, cues to all, the perfect physical expression of what did and could happen in the music, and I saw what it actually might mean to understand and lead such a performance of such a piece… even if I never learned to do so even close to his level.

This week, at the rehearsals that included a different Beethoven symphony, I finally had the opportunity, decades later, to thank him for that gift.

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.

Young Redwood Forest

Young Redwood Forest
Young Redwood Forest

Young Redwood Forest. Butano Redwoods State Reserve, California. June 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A forest of young second-growth coast redwood trees, Butano Redwood State Park

Today’s post will swing in essentially the completely opposite direction from yesterday’s, which featured a photograph made in one of the very driest and most desolate areas of a very dry and desolate place, Death Valley National Park. So today I share a photograph from a lush and green location, one of California’s redwood state parks—this one the Butano Redwoods State Park, near the California coast between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay.

The first day of June was a foggy one in the Bay Area and along the Central California coast, so it seemed like I might be able to find the fog-sun boundary a bit later in the morning that usual. With that in mind I drove over the hills to the coast and then headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Cruz, eventually turning onto a road that heads back up into the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains range. A few miles back from the ocean, I found the edge of the fog at this state park, where I walked up the valley of a creek running through the second-growth redwood forests, stopping frequently to make photographs of the lush green terrain until the fog cleared and the light became too intense.

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.

Desert Holly, Badlands

Desert Holly, Badlands
Desert Holly, Badlands

Desert Holly, Badlands. Death Valley National Park, California. April 3, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Desert holly grows in desolate badlands of Death Valley National Park

In a world of rugged and tenacious desert life, the desert holly plant seems to stand almost alone, at least among plants that are large enough to make an easily visible contribution to the landscape. In almost any forlorn and sub-blasted spot where nothing else seems to grow you will find desert holly. And it won’t just be there, but will often give the appearance of being a healthy plant, as if there should be nothing unusual about growing out of nothing more than bare rock. There are often at least some green leaves, and when the light passes through the plant from behind, it can produce a warm glow.

I had seen this group of plants several times before when I visited this particular area where very little grows on a badlands terrain of colorful and varied soils. Nearby there are places where the dry and hard soil is white or red or even green and bluish, but this band of nearly black stands out. It is in a spot that where it is a bit awkward to stop and get out camera gear, so I have just passed by before—but this time I finally found a spot to pull over and walk back to this small dark gully with the desert holly plants arranged along its bottom.

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.

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.