Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow

October 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Time to share aspen photos again! Each fall when the aspens change colors I head to the eastern Sierra to go aspen hunting! I made my first foray of the season this past weekend. I visited a number of the usual places – Bishop Creek, McGee Creek, Rock Creek, and Lee Vining Canyon. I’ve come to think that every aspen color season has a personality, defined by how and when and with what intensity the color appears, along with the related issues of the changing weather.

This year I think (from what I’ve heard) that the higher elevation trees were just changing colors about a week ago… before a strong early season storm came across the Sierra, dropping temperatures and quite a bit of snow. Over the weekend I saw up to about one foot of snow in places, which is an unusual amount for so early in the season. The aspen color was not exactly astonishing, and I think that the weather may be at least partially to blame. It seems that many of the mature colorful leaves were knocked down by the storm, and others that might now be colorful instead turned black and brown. While there was some interesting color, in many places I saw trees with leaves missing or trees that were almost fully still green.

The good news to take away from this is that since the lower elevation trees are still very green, there should be some fine aspen color very soon.

But I’ve often thought that a single leaf can be enough to make a photograph, and sometimes the single leaf can make a more effective image than a huge, colorful grove spanning many acres. So when I find that the color isn’t what I expected, one response is simply to look harder. As I walked along the road that passes North Lake, many of the subjects that I might have expected to photograph were nowhere to be seen. There were not large, spectacularly colorful trees. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground. So I looked harder… and one of the subjects I noticed was this single, small branch full of intensely colorful leaves lying on the snow.

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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. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Commentary, Community, Night Photography

Night Photography Article at SFGate

October 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Updates:

I can’t believe I neglected to include the link to the article! See “Photographers Find Light in the Dead of Night“
After I posted the link to this article earlier today I got word that two of my prints have been selected for inclusion in the show. Hope to see some of you Bay Area photographers at the reception!

San Francisco’s SFGate web site has an article on night photography and especially on the history of the medium in the San Francisco Bay Area:

“Before this eccentric genre emerged here in the 1970s, only a handful of shutterbugs shot in the dark. At the turn of the 20th century, Alfred Stieglitz conjured images of an evanescent New York. In the 1920s and ’30s, Brassaï captured lustrous scenes of Paris a la nuit. And O. Winston Link glorified American modes of transportation against the backdrop of night in the 1950s.

But night photography didn’t become a codified style until a group of Northern Californian photographers (including Richard Misrach, Arthur Ollman and Jerry Burchard) started tackling nighttime as a major theme in their work.”

The Bay Area has been fortunate to be a bit of a hot spot for night photographers who have “gone over to the dark side,” and this continues. The Nocturnes, the Bay Area night photography group, is celebrating its 20th year with a series of exhibitions this year, including a recent show at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard (which is, in many ways, ground zero for area night photographers) and an upcoming event:

The Nocturnes 20th Anniversary Photography Exhibit: Reception 6:30 p.m. Nov. 9. Through Dec. 3. Free. Harvey Milk Photo Center, 50 Scott St., San Francisco. (415) 554-9522. harveymilkphotocenter.org.

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns

October 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A bed of ferns grows at a trail junction under deep redwood forest cover at Muir Woods National Monument.

This photograph was made in the late winter of 2009, during that time of the year when the redwood forest is still very wet and cool, but when flowers are blooming and spring is clearly on the way. The location is along the very popular (and often quite busy) main trail along the creek through the central part of the park. No doubt I had to wait a bit for the combination of these beams of light and no other visitors on the trail!

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Walls, Roofs, Orange Paint

October 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A section of brick wall above old roofs is painted bright orange, Chelsea, New York City.

This photograph was made from the High Line Elevated Park in morning light. If you like the textures and colors and machinery and forms of dense and old urban structures, there is a lot to see and photograph from the High Line. I made a photograph of the same under-construction area in the far right of this frame (not completely visible) a year ago, but that was at a very different time of the day. On this morning, the odd patch of bright orange paint on the brick wall (and the smaller bit around the door frame) got my attention, so I leaned as far as I could toward the edge of the walkway and made a photograph unobstructed by the guard rail.

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