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

Eroded Gullies at Zabriskie Point, Morning

September 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Low angle morning light illuminates a tortured landscape of eroded gullies at Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.

I recently “rediscovered” this photograph while undertaking a major review of the past eight years of my raw files. (And, yes, that task is just about as much fun as you might imagine. It would actually be pretty unbearable except that every so often I find some photographs that I had perhaps forgotten or overlooked, and I also come across images that remind me of experiences that took place some time ago.)

This photograph was made, as virtually anyone who has visited the spot recognizes, by pointing my camera about 90 degrees to the left of the classic Zabriskie Point views. Timing was important, as the early light is just skimming across the tops of these tortuously eroded gullies, picking out the ridges between them but leaving the lower sections in shadow. But good fortune also played a role here. Death Valley is usually a clear blue sky kind of place, but on this morning I had clouds! At dawn, if I recall correctly, the clouds actually interfered with the light a bit. But as the sun rose the clouds provided a more dramatic background than plain blue sky and created some softer and diffused light that gave just the right sort of dynamic range for photographs.

On a technical note, if you are viewing this in the right web browser you can mouse over the image and see a summary of basic EXIF data. (Sorry, but this feature only works in web browsers – if you are viewing email, etc. you’ll need to visit the version at my blog to see the EXIF.) If you do check the EXIF you might notice that this photograph was made with a very humble example of photographic technology, the Canon Digital Rebel XT. This camera is a 8MP cropped sensor “consumer” camera that I acquired when I first tested the waters of DSLR photography. (I had actually used digital cameras back in the 1990s, but not for serious photographic work.) Those who wonder which of today’s current DSLRs might enable them to produce interesting and effective images might consider what could be done with such a humble camera. ;-)

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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

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

“Shaftway” Loading Dock Doors, Chelsea

August 31, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Loading dock doors of a brick industrial building in Chelsea, New York City.

I made this photograph on my last morning in New York City in late August, when we visited a side street with many galleries in Chelsea. This is in an area, as I understand it, that has been shifting from more or less industrial to galleries and other more “trendy” endeavors now that the High Line park has, along with other developments, made the area more attractive.

As we walked out of (or was it into?) a doorway across the street, the “SHAFTWAY” sign on the green door caught my attention. As I look at the photograph more now I see a number of other things in it that intrigue me that I wasn’t fully aware of when I made the exposure.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Lupine and Fog

August 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring lupine blossoms grow on fog-shrouded slopes of Mission Peak above Fremont, California.

While doing a major review of the past half-dozen years of raw files this week I have come across quite a few photographs that I had more or less forgotten. (I’ve also deleted a lot of old raw files, but that is a different story.) While I had forgotten this photograph, I remember the day I took it quite well and the memory of the photograph came back as soon as I found it.

Mission Peak is more than 2000′ feet above the Mission San Jose (part of Fremont) area of the San Francisco Bay Area, in the East Bay a bit north of San Jose. The peak is a very popular hiking location due to its proximity to urban areas, its quick access to near-wilderness, and the fact the summit provides a spectacular view of the southern parts of the San Francisco Bay, ranging from the South Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains all the way up to San Francisco and, on clear days, beyond. On this day it was not clear, at least not at the start of the hike – it was extremely foggy, quite wet, and rather cold. But anyone who photographs flowers much knows that soft and diffused light can be your friend, and this fog certainly provided that light. The fog-obscured hills beyond are covered in the intense green (what I call the “impossible green”) of the California grasslands in spring.

By the way, I recall that as I continued on up the trail past these flowers and approached the summit of the peak I emerged above the fog bank to find hillsides carpeted with more lupine and with California golden poppy flowers.

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Commentary, Ideas

RAW File Review – Rediscovering the Past

August 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

After returning from New York City last week, I took on the daunting task of reviewing about eight years worth of raw files. (Anyone who has tried probably just exclaimed, “yikes!,” or something much less polite… :-)

I’m _very_ conservative when it comes to deleting raw files, figuring that it is better to end up keeping files I don’t need than to find out that I trashed something that could have been useful. In addition, as I do an annual review of the previous year’s raw files every winter, I invariably discover a few good photographs that I had somehow passed over or failed to notice at the time I made them.

As non-fun as the process of reviewing tens of thousands of files can be, there are some worthwhile results, including:

I do delete a fair number of just plain useless files that have been cluttering up my hard drive. I figure that if it wasn’t interesting a the time I took it, wasn’t interesting during my annual raw file review, and still isn’t interesting a few years later… it may be time to get rid of it.
I find some (to me, anyway) real treasures that I had overlooked to misunderstood or simply forgotten at the time. At some point I’ll write more about why this happens, but it is not unusual to fail to understand how a photograph works right after making it. But when viewed with some temporal distance, some photographs turn out to surprise me by how successful they might be. So one of the pleasures of this otherwise daunting task is the discovery of such images.
I relive experiences related to the making the photographs. When I view my own photographs, the visual imagery is always associated with non-visual experiences that were part of the process of making the photo. When I “rediscover” some of these older image – even some that turn out not to be photographically worthy of sharing – I also rediscover those experiences that I had forgotten and all sorts of memories return. (Among those in this batch are many of my family – especially fun during the week when our youngest son moved off to a different city of get his first job.)
I learn things about my own photographic growth that might not be apparent when only considering the most current work. For example, I’m often struck by how certain themes and ways of seeing that I’ve come to recognize more recently were already present in work done quite a while ago. Understanding this is important, I think, to developing self-awareness as a photographer.

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