Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Grove Of Small Aspens

Image Leave a comment
Grove Of Small Aspens
A grove of small aspens with leaves beginning the transition to autumn color.

Grove Of Small Aspens. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A grove of small aspens with leaves beginning the transition to autumn color.

This photograph comes from very early in the annual eastern Sierra Nevada fall color transition. I would typically start my serious aspen color search in California about a week into October, but this year I was out looking during the first week of the month. In truth, you can find earlier color in the Sierra — sometimes due to unusual weather conditions during the past year and sometimes due to anomalous trees in certain places that change earlier than others. This grove of small trees lay in the shadows next to a rocky hill, and the color transition was just beginning.

I want to share a few other factors that crop up in this particular photographic interpretation. When photographing in shadows — as was the case here — the light can be very blue. We face an interesting question about how to deal with that in the post-processing phase. We could leave the image “as the camera saw it,” but because the camera doesn’t see the way we do it may look unusually blue. Or we could tone down the blue in any of several ways — lower the saturation of the blue channel, shift the color balance toward yellow, and so on. Here I did the latter, which is the more typical approach. There’s one other thing going on in the interpretation of this photo that bears mentioning. Various approaches to post-processing might be said to characterize the quality of many photographers’ styles. In this photograph I employed an increasingly common technique — one that I don’t generally use, but which can provide a different “look.” Essentially I softened aspects of the image and then compensated for that by altering other parameters that can produce what I think of as subjective sharpness — contrast, saturation, and adjustments to curves. I won’t give everything away here, but you might look at the photograph and see if you can identify some of what is going on in it.

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

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Urban Geometry

Image Leave a comment
Urban Geometry
A woman walks past a building with a display under construction.

Urban Geometry. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman walks past a building with a display under construction.

One element of the urban/street world that fascinates me is the juxtaposition of “perfect” structures — geometric patterns, shiny metal, highly designed forms — with the imperfect and always-deteriorating nature of this world — peeling paint, dirty sidewalks, constant construction and reconstruction, accumulated dirt, and so forth. Long ago the fact that urban structures fell short of the theoretical perfection offered in architectural drawings bothered me, but now I find it fascinating.

This is an example of one of those little scenes that always seem to catch my eye. The facade fo this building is, from one perspective, quite boring, even though its patterned wall and metal lights depart from typical (and often rather plain) urban surfaces. But notice some interesting things about it. For example, because the sidewalk and street are inclined, the designer was faced with a question: align the metal form beneath the windows with the sidewalk or align them with one another? And if you align with the sidewalk — as is done here — what do you do about the size of the windows and about their alignment? (The sizes were kept the same, leaving the lower bank out of alignment… but they are “corrected” in the second level!) Beyond that, the contrast with the op-art nature of the under-construction window dressing is fascinating. I waited for a passer-by to enter the scene before making the exposure.

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

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Last Light, Moraine, Trees

Image Leave a comment
Last Light, Moraine, Trees
The last evening light touches clouds and a rugged ridge above an old moraine and trees growing on a rocky hill

Last Light, Moraine, Trees. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The last evening light touches clouds and a rugged ridge above an old moraine and trees growing on a rocky hill.

When the first seasonal California rains arrive in fall — and snow comes to the Sierra Nevada once again — I’m often still working my way through the archive of photographs from the previous season. As I look back at these (mostly) summer photographs on a day like today, with wind and rain here in Northern California — I often pause to consider how different places like this one are now. When you stop to think of it, what those of us who visit the high peaks in the summer think of as “normal” — those sunny, warm, snow-free days — is actually the exception in a range where it is more likely to be cold and snowy during the majority of the year.


I made this photograph on one of those sunny days around the beginning of September — a fascinating time up there, when it is still the warm season, but when the signs that winter is coming are unmistakeable. After a week of almost universally clear skies, on this evening we had glorious clouds, and everyone was out admiring and photographing the sky and the evening light on peaks. That light is obvious here, but other elements of this scene seemed important to me, too. Those trees on the rocky rise are examples of what we find in this high country — small trees often living in little more than cracks in the rock. And beyond the trees but below the sunlit ridge is a gigantic terminal glacial moraine, one of the biggest I’ve seen in this range.

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

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

On The Phone

Image Leave a comment
On The Phone
A man leans against concrete wall to talk on his phone.

On The Phone. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A man leans against concrete wall to talk on his phone.

This area of San Francisco is a favorite of mine when doing street photography. There’s nothing remarkable about the street that would attract most viewers, but several things can give it photographic potential. Oddly, one feature is that there isn’t a lot there, at least not during the daytime, so people are either moving through quickly or else they are sort of hanging out like this fellow. There are also quite a few relatively plane and/or geometric surfaces here, plus the light is mostly soft and indirect.

The photograph is an example of how transient subjects and compositions can be in street photography. I spotted this guy talking on his phone from across the street. It was fairly easy to line up a composition that included him, but various things kept intruding on the scene. Passing cars momentarily blocked part of it, and other people walked through the scene. But after a few seconds of waiting — and a few other frames that intentionally included other passers-by — the stage was empty and I was able to make a photograph when he was the only person in the frame.

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

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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.