Tag Archives: black and white

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Receding Ridges, Rain

November 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A squall moves across hills near the base of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada

This photograph belongs to a portion of my work that I think of as minimalist landscapes. They often focus on landscapes that are largely hidden or in which some elements are obscured. Not all involve mist, clouds, fog, and rain, but quite a few do. In many of them I am trying to work with a kind of light that is very special to me, where the atmosphere itself becomes luminous, perhaps when filled with haze or fog or dust and lit from behind, producing a kind of glowing effect that can be so bright that it is hard to look into.

On this day I had, or so I thought, finished my autumn photography on this trip, and I was in my “heading home” mode. I had driven down from the mountains, where I had photographed in rain and incoming light snow earlier in the morning, stopped in a town along US 395 for coffee and something to eat, then gotten into my vehicle to hit the road. Not 15 minutes north of town I came to a familiar spot where I often stop to admire the view and sometimes photograph. I pulled over and went a ways up a side road and watched the landscape disappear behind rain and clouds as a squall moved through. I set up under the rear door of my vehicle so that I could have some shelter from the rain, and I began looking for places in the landscape where there was just enough detail to suggest its form but no more than necessary. (Trivia fact: This is a color photograph!)

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

Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man In White Pants

November 4, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man walks into the sun on a San Francisco sidewalk

After more than a month filled with colorful photographs of autumn foliage in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, I’m going to cleanse my palate a bit… with a black and white street photograph. I know it seems odd and even inexplicable to some that someone who photographs the natural world and likes to spend time there would also be attracted to photographing the constructed world of urban streets — but I do. In some ways I think of this other universe as more of an extension of the same way of seeing that attracts me to natural landscapes. These are simply urban landscapes and they are populated by people rather than animals. The same light falls on the city and on the mountains. In addition, photographing street tunes up my visual sense, forcing me to quickly see and respond to compositions, light, and subjects.

On a couple of occasions this past summer I joined a small group of like-minded photographers to wander around parts of San Francisco making photographs at night. We generally assembled in the late afternoon, photographed first in the daylight late in the day, grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed back out into the evening to photograph street scenes under ambient and artificial light. Here I headed up a street into the late afternoon light, focusing initially on the backlit subjects and the lengthening shadows, and then this fellow walked into the scene.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Eastern Escarpment

October 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada rises from desert hills to rugged aretes lit by dawn sun

Depending on how you approach the range, the Sierra Nevada presents two quite different aspects to the visitor. For many decades, as a long time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was only familiar with one of them. I always came to the range from the west, on long drives over coastal mountains and then across the Great Central Valley. As I approached the east side of the Valley I would encounter the low hills, at first almost imperceptible, that humbly mark the beginning of this might range. Because it tilts upward from the west, the western slopes are overall very gradual. Rising through these first low hills, the grass and oak covered landscape raises over a distance of many miles, and it is quite a while before the range starts to feel like “the mountains,” and many hours before the visitor arrives in the high alpine zone of rugged granite peaks. Even here, to the west of the crest there are plenty of gentle valleys and meadows.

The east side is a radically different world, as I finally began to understand two or three decades ago. The eastern base of the range is an arid near-desert place, made more so by Los Angeles’ historic draining of east side waters that once irrigated now-dry places and once filled today’s dusty playas with shallow lakes. The Sierra rises abruptly from this lower landscape, and in places you can look up nearly 10,000′ to the highest summits — you stand in desert and look at alpine peaks, and you see every zone in between. I made this photograph at dawn from one such valley location where the landscape that of sagebrush and playa and alkali lakes. From this spot I looked across low hills with the first coniferous trees toward the abrupt rise of the eastern foothills, backed by jagged and rugged slopes leading upward to high peaks.

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

Aspen Forest and Hills

October 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ranks of autumn aspen trees ascend the slopes of the Eastern Sierra toward the crest in afternoon light

This is a photograph of brilliantly colorful eastern Sierra fall foliage… in black and white. Because I can! The location is along US 395 as it passes along the eastern escarpment of the range, and in this spot the hills are terraced upward toward the Sierra crest, high above and out of sight in this photograph. Aspens grow in abundance on these lower slopes, interspersed with grasslands, and leading to more aspens up higher and eventually to conifer forests.

I like to photograph in this area in the late afternoon, when low angle sun light comes streaming over the top of the mountains and backlights the trees and accentuates the effect of haze. While the close trees probably first got my attention, it was the little row of trees in the far distance, seen near the upper margin of the photograph, that eventually intrigued me the most. Why black and white? To be honest, one reason that I thought of this at the time I made the exposure was that, frankly, the colors were not yet at their peak. As I though about that it became clear to me that this photograph was not so much about fall color as it was about fall atmosphere — that softening and warming of the light, the gentle haze that mutes the details of more distant subjects. And I thought of this as just a little bit of a personal challenge. Frankly, it is probably easier to make a photograph in color that says “autumn.” But I know that black and white photographers have been able to accomplish the same thing, and I thought it would be interesting to give it a try myself.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: black and white

Receding Ridges, Rain

Man In White Pants

Eastern Escarpment

Aspen Forest and Hills

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