Tag Archives: bokeh

Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures

Kitchen Tools #2

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Kitchen Tools #2
Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

Kitchen Tools #2. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

When looking for subjects to test (otherwise know as “get to know”) a new camera or lens, it is amazing what things one can find to photograph! This week I’m trying to get up to speed on a new camera — more about that below — and how it works with some lenses I already have. On this evening I slapped a macro lens on the thing and headed to the kitchen to photograph… a whisk, blender blades, coffee cups, and others stuff that was lying around.

It is important to me to both understand objectively how my camera equipment functions and to develop an intuitive familiarity with it. The former helps me make smart decisions, and the latter is very important in the field, where I don’t want to get stuck wondering how the gear works. In this case, the new equipment is a Fujifilm X-T5 that I got to upgrade from the XPro2 that I’ve been using for my “small camera” photography for the past few years. For this photograph and a few others like it I put the Fujifilm 80mm macro on the camera.

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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Photographs: Nature

Wisteria Leaves

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Wisteria Leaves
Spring wisteria leaves, San Francisco Bay Area.

Special Note: Patty and I are presenting a Silicon Valley Open Studios event on May 21 and 22. Look us up (Dan | Patty) or contact us for information. Visit us and see our prints!

Wisteria Leaves. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Spring wisteria leaves, San Francisco Bay Area.

The process leading me to this photograph was a bit oblique. This is another image from our spring visits to a garden full of seasonal flowers. I had been photographing tulips when I was distracted by wisteria plants that were almost completely covered with dense flowers. I went to photograph the flowers, but up close they didn’t see quite as fascinating as the bush seen as a whole. But as I worked on photographing the flowers the leaves kept getting in my way… until I realized that perhaps they might make the photograph.

Moving from focusing on the flowers to incorporating the leaves, I first simply included a few leaves in a flower photograph to provide a bit of contrast. As I worked I continued to given the leaves a larger and larger portion of the images. Soon I was primarily focused on the leaves, including the flowers only as background. I placed the flowers behind the leaves and narrowed the focus zone to emphasize the leaves. Eventually, as in this photograph, I removed any obvious presence of the flowers at all.

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.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brewery Window

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Brewery Window
A window at Hapa’s Brewery in San Jose, California

Brewery Window. San Jose, California. June 21, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A window at Hapa’s Brewery in San Jose, California

Today’s photograph is the result of something other than endeavoring to go out and make photographs, but it might also be evidence that some kind of photograph can be made almost anywhere at almost any time. We heard there was an event hosted by Fujifilm at a relatively new brewery not too far from where we live. We have been meaning to visit this place for months without ever quite managing to go, but the prospect of getting to play with a range of Fujifilm camera equipment and try out a new brewery was enough to get us to go.

The premise of the event was loaning various Fujifilm cameras and lenses to interested folks for fifteen minutes at a time. I already really on a Fujifilm system for my street and travel photography, but I thought it would be fun to play with their tiny rangefinder X100F, a small fixed-lens camera in the street photography tradition. I didn’t have a lot of exotic subjects to work with — basically a brewery full (mostly) of people trying out cameras! This photograph had two goals. The mundane one was testing the bokeh of the fixed lens on this small camera. The aesthetic angle was placing the window frame in such a way that it divided the background into four independent images rectangles that are quite different from one another.

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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Commentary

Metal Wall

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Metal Wall
A metal wall leads away toward a person standing in a doorway

Metal Wall. San Jose, California. June 21, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A metal wall leads away toward a person standing in a doorway

This certainly qualifies as an opportunistic photograph. We had heard that a local brewery was going to host a Fujifilm “drink and click” demo this evening. We’ve been wanting to try the place out, and the added attraction of being able to play with a whole bunch of Fujifilm cameras and lenses clinched the deal. A local camera store collaborated with Fujifilm to show up with a bunch of their x-trans camera bodies and good cross-section of their lenses. Since I already have the Fujifilm XPro2 camera, I was mostly interested in trying out lenses and the X100f rangefinder camera.

So I had the X100f for about 15 minutes, mostly inside the brewery but also just outside. I figured out the camera pretty quickly and then just made a bunch of handheld photographs, trying a range of techniques and settings to get a feel for the camera. For this image I was interested in seeing how the fixed 23mm f/2 would do with a narrow focus plane (at f/2) and what the resulting bokeh would look like. I think the camera passed the test pretty well.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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