Tag Archives: blossom

Beneath the Blooming Dogwood

Beneath the Blooming Dogwood
Light glows through the blossoms and leaves of a spring dogwood tree.

Beneath the Blooming Dogwood. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Looking upwards toward dense spring dogwood flowers.

Over a month ago I shared a photograph of a blooming dogwood tree in Manhattan’s Central Park. In that post I alluded to the fact that this was not likely to be quite my typical year for photographing this kind of tree. Typically I would make a spring visit to Yosemite Valley and other nearby areas to photograph this annual event, but it looked like I wouldn’t this time. But surprises arrive, and a few weeks later I did find myself in Yosemite with camera next to flowering dogwoods. But the surprises weren’t over, and later I photographed these blossoms in a San Francisco Bay Area location.

There’s a beautiful public garden on the San Francisco Peninsula where we go regularly to photograph. We started much earlier this season, and we had seen dogwood trees there — though I didn’t photograph them much. We went back much later, at the end of spring, and we were surprised to find new dogwood blooms in this place where we had thought they were spent.


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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Columbine Flower

Columbine Flower
A columbine flower, photographed in soft light at a San Francisco Bay Area garden.

Columbine Flower. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

A columbine flower, photographed in soft light at a San Francisco Bay Area garden.

In another recent post featuring a Columbine flower (in that case a purple and white version) I mentioned my first awareness of this type of flower. It came decades ago on Sierra backpack trips when I saw a version of the flower up high in alpine country. The incongruity of a delicate white flower in such a place formed my ideas about it. That cemented my (not entirely correct) notion that thee columbine is an alpine flower and that it is always white.

The flower in this photograph is white, but I found it at a distinctly non-alpine location in the San Francisco Bay Area — a large public garden on the San Francisco Peninsula. We had gone there for a summer event featuring drinks and food al fresco in this setting of grasslands and woods, but we did bring our cameras and planned on spending some time photographing the spring flowers.


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.

Foxglove Flowers

Foxglove Flowers
A row of colorful foxglove flowers hang from a horizontal branch.

Foxglove Flowers. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

A row of colorful foxglove flowers hang from a horizontal branch.

The garden where we found these flowers contains hundreds of blooming foxglove plants, or at least it did when we visited in early June. They are quite impressive plants, typically with tall and upright stalks supporting large, densely-packed masses of colorful flowers with their characteristic dotted pattern inside the blossoms.

A few were so full of flowers that they had leaned over, and as a result the flowers were hanging staring down below small green leaves and the main stem. I photographed this in soft evening light, not long before sunset.


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 | Twitter | Flickr | FacebookEmail

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.

Columbine Flower

Columbine Flower
A purple, yellow, and white columbine flower.

Columbine Flower. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

A purple, yellow, and white columbine flower.

The first time I recall seeing, or at least recognizing, a Columbine flower was on a long-ago Sierra backpacking trip that took me way up high. Those versions of this flower are essentially white, and their graceful shape surprised me in the high, rugged terrain. The flower became one of my Sierra favorites, and I’ve always associated it with the high country.

Encountering these Columbines near sea level in the San Francisco Bay Area reminded me that there’s more to this kind of flower than that initial experience — though it also reminded me of high country visits. These versions of the flower were quite beautiful, combining the familiar white with purple and yellow. I photographed this on as a last bit of filtered sunlight back-lit the petals.


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 | Twitter | Flickr | FacebookEmail

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

Scroll down to leave a comment or question. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)


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