Two men sitting atop a public monument in Trafalgar Square, London
The main appeal of Trafalgar Square for me, I think, was the people. The variety of visitors was surprising, including locals, international tourists, people just passing through, folks staking out a space in order to spend some time, and so forth. In many places the square contains crowds of people.
It seemed that these two fellows had discovered a way to find a small measure of solitude in this busy urban scene, namely to climb up on the monument and sit about the crowd.
Dried canyon mud illuminated by reflected canyon light, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah
There are at least two stories in this photograph. The first one can be read directly from the materials, patterns, and colors of the photograph. The location is the bottom of a wash, a shallow canyon that is often dry but which may flood during rain. When water flows everything is rearranged. Sand settles to the bottom, a fine silt may lie on top, and eventually the layers dry in this warm climate. The dried silt contracts and splits then curls into odd shapes — here some of the silt has formed small tubes and all of it has rolled up and separated from the underlying red sand. On a sunny day like this one the light strikes canyon walls high above and bounce among them, picking up the color of the red rock and softening. The red light that suffuses the scene is contrasted by a slight bluish tint that comes from blue sky vaguely reflected on smoother parts of the dry silt.
The second story involves a group of a half-dozen photographers and friends. After a rather lazy morning of breakfast and coffee and conversation, we finally set off on foot down the wash that passed by our camp. As we walked the canyon narrowed and before long rocky walls began to rise on both sides — a common story in this terrain. Rounding a bend we caught sight of… dry mud. What happened next would probably perplex or amuse any non-photographers who might have happened by. In this grand landscape of towering walls and deep valleys, we spent the next half hour earnestly bent over tripods, carefully and repeatedly photographing… dried mud.
If you are a Canon-using photographer you are almost certainly aware that Canon has released two new DSLR cameras in the 5D series, the 5DS and the 5DS R models. Both provide approximately 50 megapixels (MP) of sensor resolution along with some other improvements. The cameras seem to be an excellent next evolutionary step for Canon photographers who can use the additional resolution.
Canon EOS 5Ds DSLR
I have the 5DS R model and I’ve had the chance to photograph with it twice as of this date. I have been asked to share my thoughts on the camera, but it is still a bit too early for me to write a full report — I want to make more photographs with it and I want to make some very large prints from the files first. Meanwhile I can share a few things: Continue reading Canon EOS 5DsR Quick Update→
Early evening light on the face of a rugged and weathered sandstone cliff, Capitol Reef National Park
Recently I have been thinking about where we find subjects for photographs and about the fact that they are everywhere — I could say that you don’t always have to seek out particularly “special” places, or I might instead say that if you look closely enough almost any place can be special in some way. I do understand the interest in creating photographs of recognizable subjects and perhaps even the challenge of trying to make such photographs stand out in some way. But for me it is far more interesting to use the camera as a means of focusing more closely on what I can find wherever I am, and then trying to clear away obstacles to seeing these subjects in my own way.
Late in the day we had stopped along a section of roadway in Capitol Reef National Park. We knew, of course, that red rock sandstone cliffs and autumn trees were there, but most of all we stopped because the light was so fascinating. We simply walked along the road and looked, and almost everywhere we looked we found something that seemed like it might be worthy of a photograph. There was so much to see in this small area that as fast and furiously as we photographed, we felt like the light was passing too quickly. The subject of this photograph is a rough and weathered by of sandstone cliff that I happened to notice as I looked up from another subject I had been photographing.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
