This photograph was a sort of accident in a way. I had a bit of extra time in the mid to late afternoon since I had finished my morning photography, eaten lunch, and planned a particular shot for the evening. I decided to wander over toward the Ahwahnee to see if I could photograph some foliage in that area of the Valley and on the way I saw this view, with dappled sunlight in the foreground on the grass and the small grove of trees with yellow foliage standing out against the backdrop of the darker forest.
The Bridge can seem like a painfully obvious subject if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area. However, like many familiar iconic photographic scenes, devoting some time to the subject can pay off in images that can be different from the familiar, expected ones.
For fun, here are links to a few of mine that I like:
Jim Goldstein is a San Francisco Bay Area photographer whose work includes many photographs of Bay Area icons. He has apparently been trying to get a particular shot of the Golden Gate Bridge for some time now… and he recently got it. See Out of the Gloom: Golden Gate Bridge and Fog – for the photograph and for the story of getting the shot.
Branches and clouds reflected in the surface of the Merced River
This photograph was taken along the shore of the Merced River near the “housekeeping” camp along the south side of the Valley. I had wandered over here to photograph a tree on the opposite bank that had dropped an interesting bunch of colorful leaves. (That photograph turned out to be, I’ll be honest, boring… ;-) As I got ready to take down the tripod and leave I noticed this interesting bunch of partially submerged branches along the waterline.
I recently (May 2015) reworked this photograph, and I like the newer interpretation quite a bit more than the original. Here there are “three worlds” in the photograph — the solid material of the branches and their crisp reflections in the water, the barely visible branches beneath the water’s surface, and the very light reflections of sky and thing clouds.
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 | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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