Photographs: France, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pedestrian, Old Buildings

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Pedestrian, Old Buildings
A pedestrian walks past a Paris wall full of interesting shapes

Pedestrian, Old Buildings. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A pedestrian walks past a Paris wall full of interesting shapes

Folks like this fellow are often subjects in my street photography. I frequently located an interesting group of buildings or similar, and then I wait for a person to populate the scene. Fortunately, this fellow came by pretty quickly after I had worked out my composition and so forth.

The person is interesting and provides a central focus. However, I feel like the photograph is actually more about the architecture than the person. The person does give the image a focus, but I was more interested in the almost-cubist forms of the wall here. The colors are all rather muted, though the dynamic range is quite large.

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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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Color

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Aspen Color
Colorful autumn aspen trees in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Aspen Color. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful autumn aspen trees in the Eastern Sierra Nevada

On the surface, at least, this is a very simple photograph… so it gets a simple title: Aspen Color. The trees are part of a large (and both popular and accessible) grove in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Like so many others, I stop here each autumn, and I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the trees rising from a creek to far up the surrounding slopes, almost committing to memory the general scene and many of its details. While many Sierra Nevada aspen trees tend to be short and somewhat twisted, at least by comparison to those familiar groves to Colorado trees standing straight and tall, in places in the Sierra you can find those big, stout, and tall trees. This grove is one of those places, though there are plenty of the smaller trees mixed in, too.

On the day I made this photograph the colors in the larger grove varied from deep green to extremely bright yellow/gold, with a few bits of red-orange visible here and there. The latter colors first caught my attention in the spot shown in the photograph. The reddish color was subtle and only in a small area, but it was the starting point for the idea of the photograph. It is hard to make some sort of order out of such complex detail, but the idea was to place a complete tree along the left side of the frame, put that bit of red-orange at lower right, and to include some of the leaves that had not yet lost their green tint.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Coastal Bluffs, Morning Fog

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Coastal Bluffs, Morning Fog
Under foggy morning skies, steep coastal bluffs rise above the Pacific Ocean along the Big Sur coast

Coastal Bluffs, Morning Fog. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Under foggy morning skies, steep coastal bluffs rise above the Pacific Ocean along the Big Sur coast

I’m fortunate to live in a (photographically speaking) “target rich environment.” Two hours to my west is the Great Central Valley of California, a couple of hours beyond that and I’m high in the Sierra Nevada, and a bit more driving takes me to the east side of the Sierra and the beginning of basin and range country. I can get to Death Valley in a day’s driving. San Francisco is a train ride away, and a bit north of that begins the heart of coast redwood country. (I can actually get to redwoods by driving only about a half hour from home.) Less than an hour away is the Pacific Ocean, and a somewhat longer drive takes my past Monterey and Carmel and into the remarkable Big Sur coastline.

That’s where I went on this day, getting a somewhat later start than I hoped for but arriving in time to find fog still hanging around among the coastal mountains and bluffs. I know this coastline well enough to photograph in some little-known spots, but this location is very close to something quite iconic. I’ve photographed this location many times, in all sorts of conditions — fog, brilliant sun, winter storms. It can be a very colorful and bright place late on a clear-sky day, but on this morning it had a quieter and more closed-in feeling.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Shoreline, Glacial Moraine

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Shoreline, Glacial Moraine
An old glacial moraine reflected the water of an alpine lake in blue hour light

Shoreline, Glacial Moraine. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An old glacial moraine reflected the water of an alpine lake in blue hour light

Over the years — decades, actually — I have learned to recognize more patterns in the backcountry landscape. (Which is not to say that I recognize or understand everything — there is still more to learn!) In places where I used to, and still do, respond with, “beautiful scene!,” I now ask additional questions: What makes it beautiful? Why does it look this way? How are these features connected? What processes are at work here? How is this changing? I have always known that glaciation played a big role in the formation of the Sierra Nevada. It is hard to miss this when crossing glacial polish on a granite slab or when tracing the shapes of Yosemite Valley. But it took longer to become aware of subtler effects.

For many years I hiked a particular route out to the Sierra crest that begins not far from Tioga Pass. There is considerable up and down in the first section of the hike — notable enough that I remember three specific such locations. It wasn’t until I had crossed them quite a few times that I realized that they were the remnants of very old lateral/media moraines. That doesn’t make them any easier to cross, but it does “excuse” them! This photograph includes another of these patterns, in this case a mound of gigantic boulders and smaller talus that was clearly pushed up by a small but long gone glacier that stopped just short of the shoreline of this lake. I made the photograph in blue hour light, in the shadows of the ridge above the talus field, and that light and the nearly smooth water evoke for me the stillness and deep quiet of such places.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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 and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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