Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Fallen Leaves

September 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fallen leaves on a grate along a Seattle downtown sidewalk

August 14 was a day off during the Seattle Opera “Ring” cycle – a series of four Wagner operas performed over a six-day period. For those who may not know, attending a full production of the Ring is almost a full-time occupation for the better part of a week. This may sound unbelievable to those who cannot imagine such a thing, but the four operas range from as short as about 2 1/2 hours up to well beyond five hours for the last one, Götterdämmerung – and once you start to “get it” and buy into the whole story, the music, and everything that goes with a production of this thing, well you’ll understand. In any case, on this first of two free days we had during the performances we decided to keep it simple and just head to downtown Seattle to walk around and see what we could photograph.

We took a fairly free-form approach to the shoot, starting near Pike Place Market where we knew we could get some coffee and then photographing people and stuff in and around the Market. We finished there and headed south through downtown, with no particular goal in mind. Eventually we got as far as the Art Wolfe Gallery, where we looked around a bit before heading north again. These street shoots are a lot of fun. I often shoot quickly, using a small camera and almost always just a prime, and I forego the usual tripod and gobs of heavy equipment. Subjects can range from people to buildings to little bits and pieces of urban detritus, and they frequently appear and are gone quickly. Something about this conjunction of lines and textures caught my attention, along with the faintly mossy green tint and the bit of accidental nature in the form of the leaves that had fallen on the metal grate.

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.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Beneath the St. Johns Bridge

September 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Beneath the St. Johns Bridge across the Willamette River, Portland Oregon

Near the end of May we spent a few days in Portland, Oregon on a non-business trip. Most of our time was in the downtown area of Portland, probably mostly in and around the Pearl District. Yes, we did the usual stuff – Stumptown Coffee, repeated trips to Powell’s Books, sampling Oregon beer…

On the final morning before our departure we found ourselves with a few extra hours before we had to get to the airport, so we got out of downtown Portland and visited the area near the St. Johns Bridge. It was a quiet and misty morning, so our walk in the park beneath the bridge was a wet one, but I had time to photograph the bridge and the blossoming dogwood trees nearby. (For those who keep track of such things, this photograph was done using the little Fujifilm X-E1 camera – which is turning out to be a wonderful travel camera.)

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Cove and Wave

September 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A wave washes into a small cove and onto a pebble beach along California’s coastline south of Monterey

I went down to the Monterey, Carmel, and upper Big Sur coast on what seemed like the first warm-season day of the year. I have probably mentioned before that I prefer the off-season for photography – that time of year when there are storms, giant waves, clouds, rain, cold, and all sorts of interesting conditions. As odd as it may sound, I tend to almost stay away from the coast when the weather becomes too nice! (Of course, there is always fog. And in the summer along the Pacific coast, I do mean “always.”) At the first place I stopped to photograph I was feeling a bit of the letdown from the beautiful morning… but as I got out of my car and stood there in shirt-sleeve weather, warm and no wind, and looked out over the slightly misty coastline I started to feel a bit better about warm weather. :-)

A bit later I headed back toward Point Lobos, where I found a bit more surf than I might have expected, and the high tide had brought the water in close to the shoreline. Here I set up right at the edge of a low bluff above this pebble-filled beach, put a wide-angle lens on the camera, and made some photographs of the near-perfect curve of the waves entering the cove and washing up onto the beach, with sea stacks further down the coast line.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Mountain Valley

September 12, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dry and rocky little valley high in the Amargosa Mountains, Death Valley National Park

I have photographed in Death Valley for some time now, and I enjoy the place immensely. I try to spend a week or so photographing there each year, and sometimes get there more than once. With my familiarity with the place in mind, on my early 2013 visit I started to think about a different way to try to photograph this landscape. I’m not sure quite where this will lead just yet, but this is among a few photographs that mark my foray down this slightly different path.

Photographs never provide the viewer with a complete view of the objective reality of the subject. I like to say that “All photographs lie.” In the nicest way, of course. ;-) What I mean is that a photograph will diverge from the real in two basic ways. First, there are non-visual aspects of the real experience of being in such a place that the photograph, while possibly suggesting them, cannot “capture” – the heat, the feeling of an early morning breeze in a desert canyon, dust, and more. Second, the photographer necessarily imposes his or her way of seeing the place on the photograph – realistically, this cannot be avoided. We choose when to be there and make the photograph, we wait for “just the right light,” we decide how to juxtapose and frame the elements of the scene, we determine what you don’t see, and so forth. If you only saw photographs of Death Valley, even the most beautiful and compelling work, you would see only a small subset of what the place consists of, with emphasis on certain “spectacular” landscapes and types of light. I started thinking that the appeal of the place is not limited to just those experiences in the familiar photographs and that, as hard as it is to make a photograph of such things, a simple desert canyon winding toward a rocky ridge is an appealing thing when you are there – so it should be possible to make a photograph that somehow conveys that. This is one such place; basically an anonymous bit of canyon and hillside in morning light high in the Amargosa Range.

(By the way, on the day I’m posting this to the queue at my blog – June 30, 2013 – we are in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave here in California. I’m sure that this would be a particularly unpleasant place to be today!)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Fallen Leaves

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Beneath the St. Johns Bridge

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Cove and Wave

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Desert Mountain Valley

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

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