Tag Archives: black and white

Two Women, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Lower Manhattan

September 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two women overlook the East River and Lower Manhattan from the promenade of the Brooklyn Bridge Park

This little spot is very near the water taxi dock in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn and it is in the Brooklyn Bridge Park along the waterfront, so it seems like a popular place to stop, lean against the railings, and take in the view across the water toward Lower Manhattan. While waiting for our water taxi to show up, I spent a little time watching and photographing people here.

Something about this photograph seems classic to me and I think that is why I chose to go with a black and white rendition. The view of Manhattan is almost always interesting, but I also loved the light on this afternoon — it was very intense, centered just out of the frame to the left, and the atmosphere was somewhat soft, with a few small, puffy clouds floating around.

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: Nevada

Nevada Sky

September 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Cloud-filled evening sky above the basin and range country of Nevada

Speeding across northern Nevada on the California Zephyr, bound for Chicago and then New York City, the first day of our trip was coming to an end as evening arrived somewhere between Winnemuca and Elko Nevada. We began the day at the western terminus of the rail line in Emeryville, California, then crossed the Sierra in thunderstorm weather, passed through Reno, and then headed northeast into the basin and range country and the Humboldt Basin. The sky continued to be filled with monsoon clouds — showers were visible in the distance and there were periodic dust clouds raised by the wind.

During most of this traverse between Reno and Winnemuca it was difficult to see how to make a photograph from the train. Shooting through train windows is, to say the least, a challenge — reflections, spots on the windows, and the close by landscape speeding past an image-blurring speeds. But as we got to Winnemuca the light began to change, and what had been low contrast and gray began to acquire the warmer late day colors, and the clouds began to thin enough that there was now a mixture of sky and towering clouds. This is one of several photographs that I made during the last few minutes of decent light.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Pond, Trees, Reflected Winter Sky

July 22, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A seasonal wetlands pond reflects a tree and foggy winter sky

This is the second in this sequence of three photographs that I’m sharing this week. All three were made nearly a half year ago on a foggy winter day in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where I had gone primarily to photograph migratory birds — geese, cranes, herons, egrets, and more. Although I knew what attracted me making photographs of these three scenes, as I wrote in the commentary on the first of them, I couldn’t quite figure out how to “see” them as final photographs back then, and they sat in my raw file archive until I recently reviewed this older images and saw how I could work with them.

There is a thread (among many) in my photographs of shooting very brightly lit fog, clouds, mist, and haze. I love the way that these atmospheric conditions can seem to glow from within when the conditions are right, and I’m especially attracted to such light when it is both slightly transparent and so brightly lit that it is almost hard to look directly into it. In these three minimalist landscape photographs I have pushed things back toward that very bright end of the luminosity scale. There are some black tones in this image, but they are very small, and almost everything else is much brighter.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Pond, Fog, and Sky

July 21, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A few migratory birds on the reflecting surface of a wetland pond on a foggy morning

This is one of a series of three photographs that will appear here during the next few days. As I post each of them I will have a bit more to say about the ideas behind the series, which means that story will be incomplete until they are all posted. (It may remain a bit incomplete even after I post them all, but that is a different issue.) I’ll use the first photograph to say something about the circumstance that led to them. I’ll also point out that if your taste runs to big, monumental, extravagant landscapes… these don’t work that way. They are, I think, much more quiet, subtle, and introspective images. I have made small test prints, and I think that these may perhaps lend themselves to large prints on matte paper.

Nearly a half-year ago I was in California’s San Joaquin Valley, with the primary goal being to photograph migratory birds, but also with the companion goal of photographing the minimalist landscape, the expansive sky, and the changing winter atmosphere. At one point I saw a scene that was mostly sky — the actual sky and its reflection in large, still wetlands ponds — and light diffused by tule fog. I had a sort of intuitive idea about what I saw in these scenes (which I may describe more in a follow-up post) but I wasn’t quite certain how to interpret them in the post-camera part of the process. I looked at them shortly after making the images and then left them behind as I moved on to other work. Very recently I was going back through older photographs, came upon these, and a way to interpret them as black and white photographs immediately seemed obvious. I’ll write a bit more about that soon, but here I’ll end with the thought that sometimes photographs have to “age” a bit before I/we can see them for what they are and what they might be.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: black and white

Two Women, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Lower Manhattan

Nevada Sky

Pond, Trees, Reflected Winter Sky

Pond, Fog, and Sky

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