Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Morning Shoreline

Image September 27, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on the shoreline of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake.

There is a lot to see along the edges of virtually any backcountry Sierra Nevada lake. As I go though my mental inventory from many past trips I think of mornings and evenings looking straight into low sunlight, campsites (from back in the days when we still thought it was OK to camp near the water), hours spent sitting quietly among rocks and plants, slow circumnavigations of lakes, the marshy areas near inlets and outlets, the mountains rising above them, and more. We spent a week at this lake, which gave me a chance to see it in almost all of its moods.

This particular location has some significance to me. In a previous time, it was still acceptable to camp on the top of the rocky ledge at the left, and it was our “go to” spot to set up tents and bivy sacks back then. These days, the authorities have (wisely) placed that spot off limits for camping — too close to the water, too likely that colorful tents draw attention, and too little area. But we can still visit, and on this trip I used the spot to get an elevated perspective on the lake. I made this photograph in the morning, as the first direct light of the day was working its way across the landscape. Although the nearby face was still almost entirely in shadow, the further trees were catching that morning sun.

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

Reflection Deception

Image September 26, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The glass surface of a New York building reflects and distorts its surroundings.

Scenes like this are, of course, common in big urban centers that are filled with tall, modern buildings. This one comes from Manhattan. One striking difference between many new buildings and those from a much earlier era is that today the surfaces are often nearly 100% windows and, as such, the buildings are extremely reflective. A few years ago it occurred to me how odd it is that what we see when we look at these buildings today is mostly not the buildings at all. The building is essentially invisible beyond the slender outlines of frames between windows. The “surface” we see is composed of other things — sky, clouds, other buildings — that are distorted by the qualities of the reflective surface. (I have an idea for a photo project: Remove all of the reflective surfaces from images of these buildings, leaving only the minimal structural elements that are actually visible.)

These buildings are one reason that I often refer to these places and photographs of them as “urban landscapes. There is a continuum in landscape photography. At one end lies subjects that are entirely “natural” — or at least seem to be so. Somewhere in between we enter the realm of historic landscape paintings, in which it was common to include the human presence. Continue along that trajectory far enough, and it is possible to see cities as being just a different sort of landscape, and that way of seeing leads to different ways of photographing them.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Trees, Drifting Fog

Image September 25, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fog from a clearing storm drifts among backcountry Sierra Nevada trees growing on rocky ledges.

This evening marked the end of a 24 hour bout of pretty challenging backcountry weather during our August photography trip in the Eastern Sierra. We had no more set up our tents at our base camp when the skies unleashed hours of the heaviest rain I have ever experience in the Sierra backcountry. Later that evening it decreased enough that we could come out of our tents, recover some gear that had been left out in the deluge, fix dinner, and crawl back into our tents. We thought it was over, but very early in the morning it started again, though this time not nearly as heavy, and continued on into the next day. Finally, on the second evening, the weather started to break.

On this second evening we all headed out to find suitable photographic subjects. The clouds were slowly thinning, and the surrounding peaks starting to show through. Eventually we got a bit of last-minute sunset light that created utterly beautiful cloudscapes and colorful mountains. But first, I set up on top of a rocky outcropping and watched fog drift across this rocky slope, making the trees drift in and out of sight as the clouds washed back and forth.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Crosswalk People

Image September 24, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pedestrians enter a crosswalk in Manhattan.

The thought process behind a photograph like this one is hard to explain, perhaps partly because such photographs are often made instantaneously and with virtually no time for careful thought or planning. They happen almost purely instinctively when I see something in the scene that I react to, but without time to ponder what that “something” is. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that I made this photograph without even raising the camera to my eyes, or at least without time to really look. If I had waited… the moment would have been gone. I think I’m attracted initially to something in the patterns in the scene, though in retrospect I think the image is a bit more complicated to parse.

Most photography — even landscape photography, despite what some will claim — often involves split-second intuitive decisions about subjects and scenes that are completely ephemeral. It is a matter of “make the exposure now or don’t make it at all.” One thing I like about street photography is that it requires me to make these judgments quickly, and I think that hones my ability to see subjects and compositions — even when they are standing still!

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Morning Shoreline

Reflection Deception

Trees, Drifting Fog

Crosswalk People

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