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Photographs: Music & Musicians, Photographs: People

Low Strings, Rehearsal

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Low Strings, Rehearsal
Low Strings, Rehearsal

Low Strings, Rehearsal. San Jose, California. September 27 ,2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Members of the cello and double bass sections of Symphony Silicon Valley at a September 27, 2013 rehearsal

And now, as they say, something entirely different. I am midway into a three-year project that has me photographing classical musicians in San Jose, California – primarily the Symphony Silicon Valley and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. Symphony Silicon Valley is the direct descendant of the San Jose Symphony, a group that has been described as the longest running symphony orchestra in the western United States. The San Jose Chamber Orchestra is a smaller group that has a reputation for exciting and high quality performances and for promoting new works by living composers.

Since many of my usual photographic subjects are inanimate objects – as we like to say, “Rocks. Trees. Water.” – photographing performing artists is, in many ways, a very big change for me. This work is all about the people and, in fact, the point of the project is to tell the stories of these artists in a more complete way, showing and telling aspects of what they do that are not usually seen by the public and concert-goers. It was a bit of a stretch for me at first, walking around among performing artists and finding ways to see what they do photographically and record what they do and show who they are. However, I may have an advantage or two over some who might try to photograph such subjects. I have a lot of background in music, having taught it at the college level for many years, having been a performer myself at one time, and being married to a fine musician. There is as much music as photography in my life, and for this reason I believe that I am sensitive to aspects of the musical life that might not be apparent to other photographers who don’t have this background. Related to this, I have personal friendships among many in this world, which gives me a bit of an entre that has helped a lot.

I’ll likely share more of this work from time to time – from among the 2000 or more photographs that I have made so far. This photograph was made at a rehearsal of Symphony Silicon Vally in late September, 2013. Here the orchestra is preparing their performance of Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije Suite. (Folks who know the music might even be able to figure out where they are in the work – there is a hint in the photo.) For this shot I photographed from the balcony with a long lens in order to compress the perspective of this part of the stage occupied by some of the orchestra’s low string players.

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.
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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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

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Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest
Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest

Dana Meadow, Kuna Crest. Yosemite National Park, California. August 8, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dry summer grasses in Dana Meadow near Tioga Pass, forest leading to Kuna Crest

I think of this photograph as being, in some ways, very unremarkable. In a few other ways there are some things that are at least a bit unusual about it, though this probably isn’t obvious. The scene is one that is familiar to anyone who has driven over Tioga Pass between the eastern Sierra and Yosemite National Park and west side destinations. The Yosemite Sierra along this route is a very diverse place, but the large sub-alpine meadows surrounded by forest and higher peaks is very common and characteristic of the area. Sierra visitors are also probably familiar with the annual seasonal transition from lush, green meadows to drier, brown meadows.

So what is a bit unusual about this scene? For one thing, I shot it during more or less the midday hours. This is not typically when I photograph scenes like this one, but this daytime view is probably the sort of thing that we see most often when we are actually there in the range. The color of the meadow grass is also a bit unusual – not that this coloration occurs, but that it happened so early in the season this year. The almost complete absence of green in the meadow is more characteristic of a time several weeks later than this early August date, when typically we might see a combination of dry and lush. But this year has been anything but a typical one in the Sierra and in much of California. Last winter was extremely dry, and there was barely any precipitation after the new year started – and this was the second drought year in a row. The conditions in the Sierra, as seen here, are not unprecedented, but they are very unusual.

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

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: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Evening Shower, Sierra Pond

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Evening Shower, Sierra Pond
Raindrops from a late afternoon shower mark the surface of a small Sierra Nevada pond reflecting the sky

Evening Shower, Sierra Pond. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 14, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Raindrops from a late afternoon shower mark the surface of a small Sierra Nevada pond reflecting the sky

During our mid-September photographic sojourn to the back-country of Kings Canyon National Park, the four photographers in my group were blessed with a wide range of weather conditions. The weather was never difficult or bad, but we did get precipitation on something like five of the 9 days we were on the trail. This constitutes what I might describe as “interesting” weather – clouds, some showers, a bit of wind, occasional mist around the peaks, but nothing dangerous or wild enough to interfere with photography and confine us to tents. (Although we missed it, if we had stayed a couple of days longer we might well have added snow to the experience!) From my perspective, and I’m sure that I share this view with most Sierra photographers, the thing we perhaps dread most is encountering one of those weeks-long bouts of perfect blue sky boring weather. Give us some clouds and a bit of rain!

While it is possible to encounter the first Pacific weather fronts of the season at about the time we were there, with their potential for many hours or even days of “weather,” what we encountered was more like the typical summer monsoon weather. Most days started clear or nearly so, and by midday we started to see a build-up of clouds. By sometime in the late afternoon it became apparent that showers were possible, so we went out with appropriate rain gear and protection for camera equipment. As familiar as I am with this weather and even though I’m attentive to the changing conditions, it always seems that the actual onset of rain – typically a few drops seen in the surface of a lake like this one, followed by increasing showers – catches me by surprise. On the afternoon when I made this photograph, as on several other afternoons, there were patches of open sky around and I wasn’t actually expecting rain at the moment it arrived. I made this photograph at one of those moments when the rain was barely enough to feel, but when the pattern of drops on the reflecting surface of the water provided undeniable evidence of precipitation.

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.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light

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Lake, Trees, and Granite - Afternoon Light
Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light

Lake, Trees, and Granite – Afternoon Light. Kings Canyon National Park, California. September 15, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon light slants across a Sierra Nevada landscape of water, trees, and ascending granite ridges

This lake, and the rocky meadows and forest and other small lakes and ponds surrounding it quickly became one of our favorite locations to photograph during our mid-September time photographing in the Sierra Nevada range of eastern Kings Canyon National Park. This spot was a very short ten minute hike away from our camp site, and it drew us back many times over the course of our six night stay – morning and evening, fair weather and stormy. The location was so varied and detailed that there was no end of things to see and photograph.

On this day several of us headed over there in the late afternoon, and once we arrived we headed off in various directions to find photographs. By this point we were clued in to the evening pattern of light, one that suddenly and a bit unexpectedly “turned out the lights” a bit earlier than we might have expected, with the shadow of a large ridge to the west quickly sweeping from north to south across the lake. We figured out that we had to start earlier than we might typically start for evening shooting, and that we then had to watch the change carefully so as to be ready for it when it happened. By the time I made this photograph, the wind had come up and what had been smooth waters began to take on a different appearance as the wind created some surface waves. A bit of haze accentuates the difference in distance between the closest trees and the more distant trees leading up the base of the rockier slopes.

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

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.