Tag Archives: and

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California

Shoreline Building, China Camp

January 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A shoreline building extends over the edge of San Francisco Bay at China Camp

I had been watching the reflections on the calm water of this lagoon since I first arrived here in the morning. Earlier I had been on a high bluff behind the camera position for this photograph, looking down at this village and the curve of the beach of its small lagoon. The clouds thinning behind a departing Pacific weather front were starting to allow sun light to pass, yet still filtering and softening it. This light was falling on the smooth surface of this water in this relatively quiet area of the San Francisco Bay, and creating all sorts of interesting reflections.

Eventually I walked down to the village and among its old buildings, gravitating toward the shoreline. I first photographed an old pier and then investigated a building from which it extends. From here I was able to look out across the lagoon toward a further peninsula and the light of the sun on the clouds. This was technically a bit of a tricky photograph since it includes brightly sun-lit clouds right above and to the left of the building, but also includes deep shadows below and on the near side of the building. To be honest, I was unsure of what exposure would work best and provide the best balance between avoidance of blown out sky and enough shadow detail to pull it back in past without problems with image noise – so I bracketed. I bracketed like nobody’s business – making something like five exposures in the series. Ironically, in the end I was able to extract all of the detail I needed from a single exposure!

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

China Camp Pier

January 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A decrepit pier extends into San Francisco Bay at China Camp, California

This was my first visit to China Camp, on the shores of the north San Francisco Bay, after several years of thinking about it. I had seen some other photographs from the place and I knew a bit of the history of the old Chinese Camp fishing village and that it had been protected by state park status, but I couldn’t actually point to it on a map. It turned out that a group of photographers was going to visit China Camp during a weekend of shooting around the Bay Area, and I ended up more or less linking up with them.

I arrived before the rest of the group and I began by scoping out a few things for later shots and then photographing a small island that is very close to this old village. Finishing with that subject, I headed down the hill to the cover when the old village buildings are located. This pier is one of the more striking sights in the area, being in a sort of picturesque state of disrepair that has left parts of it leaning at odd angles, further accented by the odd little utility line leading out toward the water. As soon as I arrived at the small beach by the building from which the pier extends, I knew that I wanted to photograph it in a way that included the little building and the pier stretching across the frame toward the horizon, and I was pretty certain that I wanted to render it in black and white. At almost this precise moment the clouds thinned a bit and a bit of soft sunlight shone on the scene, accentuating the shadows on the water – so I quickly went to work and made three exposures of the scene before the light went dull again.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Rat Rock Island, Sky

January 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Rat Rock Island and winter sky, China Camp, California

I ended up at China Camp in connection with a “photo walk” in the San Francisco Bay Area that was devoted to long exposure photography. Photo walks have recently become quite a phenomenon, especially with the rise of Google Plus communities formed around photography. A week hardly passes around here without the announcement of another such event. Photographically they can be a bit of a mixed bag if you already know the area, but the provide fun opportunities to meet a lot of photographers of all sorts, often including a few folks you might have heard of but never met. When I go, I frequently end up shooting a bit apart from the main crowd, and that is what initially happened here… though that didn’t last!

This little island is a fairly well-known feature in the Bay Area, and I have seen beautiful photographs of it in the past. It is also not all that impressive in person, though with the right light and atmosphere it can be the center for very interesting photographic interpretations. I arrived at this location before other “photo-walkers” arrived, so I briefly had the place to myself. I tried a few things with this subject, ranging from some very tight shots that don’t include the whole island to some that used very short focal lengths to reduce its apparent size and to then set it in a much larger surrounding landscape. This is probably the most straightforward composition of the bunch. Since the focus of this day was to be “long exposure” photography, I was playing around with that idea a bit, and this shot is indeed a rather long exposure.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Old Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

January 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

This is a photograph that I wish I had seen this way while I was there! On the scene, while wandering into a beautiful section of a big, deep canyon to photograph water, sandstone, and fall colors, I came across these trees (or this tree – they may grow from a common root system) and made the photograph in landscape orientation… and only realized while working on it in post that I really like it in portrait orientation, too. So, yes, this is cropped from a larger original photograph.

I don’t know how others will “see” this, but for me this version recalls a lot of older monochrome photographs of subjects like this from an earlier era – the era in which I first came to be fascinated by photography. Way “back in the day” when I first did photography, with the encouragement and help of my father, virtually all of the photographers whose work inspired me shot black and white. With that in mind, and with my early experience involving how to shoot, develop, and print black and white, I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that I still love monochrome. (A number of my personal favorites among my own work are black and white.) In this one I even applied the virtual equivalent of the classic filtering to alter the tonal balance and lighten clouds and foliage and somewhat darken the massive, twisting forms of tree trunks and branches.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: and

Shoreline Building, China Camp

China Camp Pier

Rat Rock Island, Sky

Old Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

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