Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

After the Storm

Image October 1, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Every so often, if you are out in the field enough, nature serves up light and color that can seem almost unreal. These exceptional moments are rare, but they are memorable when they happen. Sometimes they are predictable, but more often they seem to emerge from conditions that don’t seem likely to lead to extraordinary light — the cloudy aftermath of clearing storms, thin clouds that dissipate at sunset to reveal the sky beyond, beams of light that sneak in under a cloud deck. This was one of those times.

After more than twenty-four hours of mostly rainy conditions, the precipitation stopped and the clouds thinned a bit… and we photographers headed out to see what we could find. At first, the conditions were not promising. Low clouds obscured peaks and the light was a bit flat. But before long the clouds began to thin behind peaks to our west, and there was hope that some light might come through. And then, just at sunset — as the sun dropped below the edge of the cloud deck far to the west — the clouds began to glow in shades of red and orange, against a background of darker clouds. and deepening blue sky. I made several photographs of the landscape that included the clouds, but in this one I decided to just let the clouds be the full show.

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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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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Mural, Parking Lot

Image September 30, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A large mural featuring two faces, above a Manhattan parking lot.

One of the things I like to do while making street photograph is look for odd, unusual juxtapositions. There are plenty of these in virtually any big city environment, since these places usually bring together a wide variety of people, activities, structures, and more. Street art and murals add another image element to the mix. There are some oddly disparate elements here: the two large figures, cars on lifts, and a couple of people at the lower left.

The mural on this building’s wall features two figures overlooking the street in a somewhat ominous manner. I don’t know the identity of the one on the right but the one on the left appears to be from Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” — which injects an interesting flavor into this street scene. There are other elements here that I find fascinating. I’ll leave most of them to viewers to discover, but that double vertical “dashed line” of windows is intriguing.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Post-Storm Clouds

Image September 29, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

No, I am still not quite finished with this spectacular evening in the Sierra backcountry. In early August our group spent a week base-camped in the wilderness, heading out each day (starting before sunrise and concluding after dark) to photograph our spectacular surroundings. We experienced challenging weather during the first 24 hours, but on the evening of the second day the storm dissipated, and just at sunset things opened up and alpenglow briefly lit up the sky.

There was no guarantee of this happening — which is often the case when chasing such subjects. Not long before this things were pretty gray, and fog drifted just overhead, obscuring trees and peaks, al though we could see that the sky was lightening up a bit. Then a bit of pink showed up on the higher clouds, gradually working its way down though the various layers left by the departing storm. I had been photographing the fog, but I quickly turned my attention to this developing scene! As the sky became more and more colorful, a bank of lighter fog enveloped the top of a ridge on the other side of the valley beyond the lake. A few minutes after this spectacular finale… the show was over.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Master of All I Survey

Image September 28, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man sits on a bench next to a pile of garbage bags, Midtown Manhattan.

It seems like there is always someone doing something interesting, unusual, compelling, typical, or in some other way worthy of attention in Manhattan. I’m not sure if that reflects on the character of the place or if it is simply a statistical matter — there are so many people there that you are bound to encounter, for better or worse, pretty much everything on the human spectrum. It is even possible to find isolated people, not part of any of the crowds that we associate with the place.

I saw this fellow while walking near the UN Plaza. It was morning — on a Sunday, if I recall correctly — and the area was relatively quiet. There wasn’t much of anything going on along this street, but there he sat, alone and not engaged in any particular discernible activity. In front of him was one of the characteristic morning piles of plastic trash bags, a common feature of this city.