Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Urban/Street

Foto Automatica

September 27, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A sidewalk “foto automatica” booth in Florence, Italy

The “foto automatica” (sometimes called a “photo booth” in America) is rapidly becoming a dated thing. Now that everyone carries a smart phone with its built-in camera, every place can be a photo booth. Years ago these were more common — both for simply getting a picture (or several) of yourself and for collecting a group of friends to share the cost and then mugging for the camera.

I don’t see many of these today, but there are a few still around. This one near our hotel in Florence was very popular. This photograph is a bit misleading — on virtually every other occasion when I passed by there were groups of people inside and outside. I suspect that part of the fun is that it produce something that we don’t see so much today, namely snapshots printed on paper.

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

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

Small Aspens, Boulders

September 26, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early autumn color comes to small aspen trees among Eastern Sierra Nevada boulders

There are many ways to “see” aspens, especially during the season when they briefly take on their transitional fall colors. Whole slopes filled with masses of their color are always an impressive sight. Larger views in which the aspens appear scattered within the landscape produce a different effect. The shapes of the white trunks might be the subject. We can move in close and focus on branches or even individual leaves. In some cases, the trees can act as a foil to other elements of the mountain landscape — conifer trees, the sky, flowing water. In this case, the color is, I think, a foil to the shapes, colors, and textures of granite boulders.

I made this photograph quite early in the Sierra color season, when the first trees were changing — somewhat earlier than usual this year, or so it seemed. While the largest trees were still nearly uniformly green, smaller trees and those growing in more marginal dry and rock areas were already taking on fall color. These trees are small, growing among rocks, and comprise just a few trees growing in an area that is mostly filled with conifers. In some ways, this makes their coloration even more striking than if they had been simply two trees among hundreds of aspens.

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

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Gelateria, Night

September 25, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A gelateria worker checks his phone while waiting for customers in the evening, Florence

These little places are everywhere in central Florence — and it other European cities we visited this summer. Compared to most US streets, the overall impression in most such places is that there is far less overt advertising and fewer big, bright shops with garish lighting. Against that background, the small shops, open to the sidewalk and narrow street, can look quite inviting.

The fact that they sell gelato doesn’t hurt either! Several times we got the gelato “itch” and went out looking. It might have been easier if there had been fewer choices! Often the shops are crowded with people queueing up in front, but the worker in this shop seems to be having a quiet moment to check his phone.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

East Side, Morning

September 24, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on the hills and peaks of the eastern Sierra Nevada near June Lake

I’ve occasionally written about my “discovery” of the Sierra Nevada east side perhaps two decades ago. Like so many from Northern California, my orientation to the range came from arriving by driving east across the Great Central Valley and then making the long, gradual ascent from the Valley to the summit of the range, a summit whose peaks are often not even visible from that Valley. (But when they are, what a sight!) I thought of the Sierra as being a place of mostly forested mountains, rising gradually, and only topped by the rugged granite peaks at is furthest point. Then a friend, whose orientation was from Southern California and who had approached the range from the South, got me (finally!) to visit the east side of the range.

What a difference! Here the mountains begin in semi-arid high desert sage brush country. They mostly rise abruptly along the eastern escarpment, with rocky ridges and summits exposed to view. The range immediately has an alpine quality that is quite different from the gentle forested slopes of the west side. Yet it, too, is varied. In some places the abrupt and rugged steepness is real — some of the ridges just above Round Valley, for example. But in other locations that “abrupt” escarpment is more subtle, the result of starting at even higher desert elevations (in the 8000′ range in some places) and due to some very large canyons cutting toward the summit of the range. For examples, visit the huge valley that rises above Bishop, or consider these sage and tree covered slopes gradually ascending toward the inevitable granite cliffs in the vicinity of June Lake.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Foto Automatica

Small Aspens, Boulders

Gelateria, Night

East Side, Morning

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