I missed the millionth view at the G Dan Mitchell Photography blog — I was busy working on a photograph — but not by much! Sometime before 9:00 PM PDT the blog served up its millionth page view.
Thank you to all of you who follow the blog and my photography. I appreciate it!
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Abstract photograph based on stage rigging and theatrical lighting.
I know what I’m looking at in this photograph, but I wonder how apparent the subject is to other viewers, or if it appears completely abstract? The photograph was made backstage in the wings of a theater where I have recently been photographing a very different sort of subject. The “stuff” of the theatrical world intrigues me, and the stuff here is the rigging that is mounted high in the fly space above the stage: catwalks, lights, cables of various sorts, and much more. Intense lights were mounted very high above this backstage area, shining down through much of this other material, so I simply pointed the camera up, composed a shot that included the source of the light, and made a rather long handheld exposure, during which I intentionally moved the camera a bit.
The project that brought me to this theater is a long-term one to photograph professional musicians in situations other than just their concerts. I’m initially working with classical groups, but I may consider expanding the scope to include other sorts of music later on. While working on this project I attend a lot of concerts and rehearsals. Besides having an opportunity to photographically explore this other artistic world, I get to watch and talk with musical artists and hear a ton of wonderful music. This project is not yet at the point where I’m ready to share much of the photography, but stay tuned…
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Rugged rocks and surf along the Big Sur coastline at Soberanes Creek.
I’m not certain if this spot has a real name or not, but it seems like it might be something like Soberanes Cove or perhaps Soberanes Bay, since it is at the outlet of the stream that comes down to the Soberanes Canyon from tall, steep coastal hills before entering the Pacific in this rugged, rocky area of the northern Big Sur coast not far below Carmel. Here, as the Coast Highway heads south, it makes a bit of an inland turn to cross the stream and then turns back toward the ocean to rise over another prominence that extends further toward the water. As it does so, a view opens back across the coastal bluff and over this rock-filled section of water toward the rocky coastline.
This was an “interesting” light evening along the coast – in some ways very difficult light, but with short-lived sections of more light that was very beautiful. The fog was hugging the shore line, sometimes extending a bit inland to the coastal hills, cutting off all of the late-day light. But occasionally, where the shore curves inland a bit, as in this cove, the overcast opened up a bit and perhaps even pulled away from the immediately coast and allowed some filtered light to strike the rocks and the water and the shoreline.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
The last evening light falls on a tree and a rocky pinnacle high above the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco, California.
On the return drive from our late-August sojourn to the Mendocino Coast, we returned to the Bay Area by the less efficient but more spectacular route and drove the coast on Highway 1, the “coast highway.” For the most part the road hugs the coastline, alternately dipping down to the shoreline and climbing to the tops of very tall coastal bluffs, and occasionally running inland for a short distance. We stopped in Point Reyes Station for dinner (and we can now heartily recommend Osteria Stellina!) and then continued on – and as we did I began to get a sense of where we might be for the golden hour light. It seemed like we would likely pass Stinson Beach – which seemed fine, since I didn’t have an interest in photographing there – and be somewhere south of there in the Marin Headlands.
As we ascended the high and steep road perched along the cliffs south of Stinson Beach, a lot of stuff started happening all at once. I knew that we were getting very close to “that” light, when we spotted a lone coyote along a ridge above the road… right below a large ridgeline rock and above which the nearly full moon had just appeared. Really! So we obviously had to stop and see what we could do with that subject – which turned out to be more difficult that I had thought. At about this time other likely “targets” started to appear, and I photographed back towards Stinson Beach, directly into the sun-lit haze from northern California forest fires. Then I looked closer to my location and saw this windswept tree catching the last bit of light, with a single rugged pinnacle behind it, and beyond that the surface of the Pacific Ocean, fading into the mist and picking up the pink tones of the setting sun.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
