Tag Archives: all

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

All The Colors

Image Leave a comment
All The Colors
A large grove of multi-colored autumn aspen trees in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

All The Colors. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

A large grove of multi-colored autumn aspen trees in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

When aspen trees transition from their summer green to their brief autumn show they can produce a diverse range of colorful foliage. Most of the trees turn yellow/gold, but the other colors can range between orange and several shades of red. I know some photographers look for the uniform golden colors — and they can certainly be spectacular — but I’m drawn to scenes that include the full spectrum. This is one of those scenes. In fact, here the orange trees predominate, along with green shades on trees that are yet to change. But look closer and you’ll find plenty of gold… and a few bits of red foliage, too.

Soft, shaded light with a bit of directionality is my favorite for photographing this subject. I made this photograph late in the day, just after the sun had dropped behind mountains to the west, but while the sky (and a few white clouds) still provided that slightly directional light. In these conditions the colors may not be quite as saturated, but the soft light fills that shadows and renders more of the details visible.

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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Master of All I Survey

Image Leave a comment
Master of All I Survey
A man sits on a bench next to a pile of garbage bags, Midtown Manhattan.

Master of All I Survey. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A man sits on a bench next to a pile of garbage bags, Midtown Manhattan.

It seems like there is always someone doing something interesting, unusual, compelling, typical, or in some other way worthy of attention in Manhattan. I’m not sure if that reflects on the character of the place or if it is simply a statistical matter — there are so many people there that you are bound to encounter, for better or worse, pretty much everything on the human spectrum. It is even possible to find isolated people, not part of any of the crowds that we associate with the place.

I saw this fellow while walking near the UN Plaza. It was morning — on a Sunday, if I recall correctly — and the area was relatively quiet. There wasn’t much of anything going on along this street, but there he sat, alone and not engaged in any particular discernible activity. In front of him was one of the characteristic morning piles of plastic trash bags, a common feature of this city.

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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

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

Commentary, Site News

All of My 2011 Photographs. Yes, All of Them. Really.

4 Comments

Everything from 2011…

This youtube video includes all of the photographs posted at my blog during 2011.* Yes, all of them! The photographs appear more or less in the order they were made, so this forms a sort of year-long overview. Since it does include everything, there are going to be a few, uh, slow moments in the video. (I do not recommend viewing at full screen size on large monitors since the original images used in the video were relatively small.)

If this is a slow day for you, you could even watch the whole thing!

I put this together while doing initial work on the 2001 Favorites list, an annual project of assembling a set of what I regard as some of my best work of the past year. I have some ideas about which images will make the cut for that more limited set, but I’d love to hear your opinions about what you think should be included, too. I’ll post the “finalists” for the 2011 Favorites sometime in the next week or so.

* OK, I made a lot more photographs in 2011 than what you see here. But most will never be seen in public. :-)

(Update: A few people asked “why no music to accompany the photographs?” This brings up a whole series of thoughts that I should explore in depth at some point, but which I’ll mention briefly for now. Let me get the easy one out of the way first – this wasn’t meant to be a “real” production. It was just a way for me to string together a large number of images as part of my own review of my 2011 photographs. On to the more complex issues…

Some of you may know that my academic training is in music. So, for me, adding music to images is not a simple thing – I’m afraid that I’m cursed with thinking “too much” about what it means and how it works together. For me, the idea of just “adding some music” is not a simple idea at all. In fact, it raises some questions about why we think that individual photographs are worthy of consideration in silence… but sequences of them seem to raise expectations that a musical accompaniment will be provided. Finally, given the diverse images in this large set it is hard for me to come up with a meaningful musical accompaniment that somehow ties in with the images in more than a random way. I suppose that I really need to compose my own… )

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

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

All Stops Special – Caltrain Station

Leave a comment

All Stops Special - Caltrain Station
All Stops Special - Caltrain Station

All Stops Special – Caltrain Station. San Francisco, California. July 10, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The San Francisco Caltrain station, photographed through glass lobby windows.

I frequently ride Caltrain to the City to do street photography. (Getting there by train is far better for me than taking the car, mainly because I think I can do more effective photography of this sort when I’m working completely on foot and not dealing with the whole driving/parking thing.) In this photograph I liked the nearly empty glass-enclosed lobby area, lit by very diffused light under the early morning fog, and with the trains visible on the other side. The “All Stops Special” sign seems enigmatic when seen out of context.

By the way, as much as San Francisco residents love the sunny and warmer days that occasionally come to the City this time of year, for photography I much prefer at least some fog and cloudiness, especially when I try to shoot during the daytime hours.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

(Basic EXIF data is available by “mousing over” large images in blog posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)