Tag Archives: america

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

Abandoned Building, Poles, Sky

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Abandoned Building, Poles, Sky
Utility poles in front of an abandoned brick building.

Abandoned Building, Poles, Sky. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Utility poles in front of an abandoned brick building.

This is one of my occasional walking-around photographs. I like to walk, and I done this even more during the pandemic when local walks were much more possible than drives to more distant locations. I always carry a small camera that fits in the little bag I carry on these forays. (The camera is a small rangefinder-style camera fitted with a single very small prime lens.) On most walks the camera stays in the bag, but every so often I see something that catches my eye… and I’m happy that I brought it along.

I have traveled past this spot for decades. Long ago it was part of a busy cannery run by a major company. (We could spell the aroma of incipient tomato paste and sauce from this factory miles away.) Those days are gone, and the area now features a growing collection of high density urban housing, but some of the buildings still remain. I think of this photograph as an urban landscape, and the inclusion of that sky and those clouds perhaps makes the connection more obvious.

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.

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Photographs: Abstract, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

The Sea

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The Sea
The soft color and light of fog, sky, and ocean along the Pacific Coast.

The Sea. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The soft color and light of fog, sky, and ocean along the Pacific Coast.

Well, this is slightly embarrassing. Actually, it would not be — if I just kept the story to myself. (And, indeed, I am keeping part of the story a secret. Feel free to wonder.) Just a few days ago I read about and saw some photographic work that was seemingly defined by its intentional out-of-focus quality. And not in what I regarded as a good way. My response to the work was that it looked like photographs that would have been quite mundane — bordering on snapshots — if they had been in focus. But because they were not, they ended up in a gallery. And now I present… a very out of focus photograph.

So, what to make of this? That’s actually up to you, but to the extent that a photograph is about things or expresses something, well one way to think of it is that by removing some of the familiar details of the subject you are free to think about larger aspects of it that might be less apparent if you were distracted by the “small stuff.” I’m also working with some ideas about color and luminosity here. That’s all I’ll say for now…

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.

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

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

Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Closed Fountain

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Closed Fountain
A brick wall behind a fountain closed by the pandemic.

Closed Fountain. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A brick wall behind a fountain closed by the pandemic.

If it seems like there have been a lot of black and white photographs here recently, well, yes. I’m not certain why that is, but I do know that I began as a black and white photographer, and somehow seeing in monochrome remains at my visual core.

This photograph comes from a visit to a location we visited in order fo photograph a very different sort of subject — a beautiful (mostly) formal garden full of blossoming flowers. We went there after both of us had arrived at that wonderful point two weeks after being fully vaccinated, and it was liberating to wander (masked) through the gardens. However, somehow, among those beautiful and colorful flowers, this is what I came home with! I’m tempted to offer explanations and propose a few metaphors to consider as you view the image, but since I wasn’t really consciously thinking of them when I made the photograph, I’ll just leave the photograph here and let you decide.

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 | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Dune and Sky

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Dune and Sky
Thin clouds pass above sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

Dune and Sky. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Thin clouds pass above sand dunes, Death Valley National Park.

These particular sand dunes and I have a kind of fraught relationship. The first time I visited this location was in the middle of winter some years ago. There was one other party there when I arrived, and they soon departed, leaving me to remain overnight in this vast landscape all alone. It was cold, as the higher elevations of the desert can sometimes be. And I had a difficult time finding photographic compositions that pleased me. Somehow I just found it more difficult to photograph this location than some of the others I knew better.

I was back again this spring. I was most certainly not alone this time! I think that the pandemic had enhanced the appeal of remote camping, and there were more than a dozen other parties, some quite large, on the night I was there. Late on the first day it seemed like time to make some photographs, so I loaded up and started walking. However, the wind had other ideas, and the gale was so strong that I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to photograph at all. I finally decided that if I used a relatively wide-angle lens, rather than the long focal lengths I wanted to use, that I might be able to wait for slight decrease in the wind velocity and get things stable enough to make a photograph. In the end, this particular subject and composition was the only one that I was able to complete successfully before the wind drove me back to camp.

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 | 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.

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