Tag Archives: bow

Photographs: Italy, Photographs: Music & Musicians, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Illusions, Manhattan

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Illusions, Manhattan
Illusions, photographed on a Manhattan street in winter.

Illusions, Manhattan. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Illusions, photographed on a Manhattan street in winter.

This photograph may not be quite what it first appears to be. First hint? I made “this photograph” on the streets of Manhattan on a very cold winter day. Perhaps you are now looking a bit more closely. Possibly you have noticed that odd white area on the woman’s face and wondered what it is. If you looked very closely at the scene you may have noticed a few other incongruities. I hope you wondered about the nature of the borders at the top and bottom of the image.

“All photographs lie.” This is a line I repeat frequently when certain ideas about photographs and photograph arise. I’ll admit that the statement is a bit of a cheap shot, but I say it to provoke some folks to think differently about photography, particularly the notion that it is real or that being “real” is it primary purpose or goal. The “lies” in the photograph I present here are on multiple levels, and I’ll mostly leave you to ponder them on your own.

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, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Arch and Shadows

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Arch and Shadows
A Utah red rock country arch in a shadowed canyon.

Arch and Shadows. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Utah red rock country arch in a shadowed canyon.

It can seem that improbable features like this are everywhere in Southern Utah. While many are familiar from national parks like Zion and Arches, similar features are found in less accessible places, and if you poke around enough you can experience them in relative quiet and solitude. I’ve wondered why it is this way in Utah, and I think there are several explanations including that such features really are quite common, and some that warrant national park status are in non-park areas for reasons including uneasy compromises with extractive industries.

A group of us wandered into a lovely canyon, inauspicious at the start but with sandstone walls that soon began to tower and close us in from the world beyond. These are intimate places, where your awareness is mostly confined to the space between the canyon bends in front of and behind you, and where the quiet is only broken by the an occasional birdsong and by the gentle sounds of water.

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 | Facebook | Email

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: Music & Musicians

Cello Detail

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Cello Detail
Cello Detail

Cello Detail. San Jose, California. June 6, 2014. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Close up photograph of a cello — strings, fingerboard, bow

This is a photograph from my three-year project photographing the members of two professional classical music groups. Most of the photographs were made during the fall academic terms while I was on a sabbatical, though much of the post-processing, editing, and organizational work continued beyond those periods. In fact, some of the photography continued in the same way, and I continued to photograph both groups outside of the specific time frame of the project. This is one of the photographs from that outside work, as it was made in June 2014.

As I photographed these groups I found more and more things to “see” photographically and more and more ways to photograph them. Part of the reason for this, no doubt, is that I had never before had the opportunity to focus on a single project for so long where the main subjects are people! Frankly, at the beginning of the project I had a lot to learn about that — and one of the best outcomes for me has been learning how to create photographs of human subjects, from the technical, aesthetic, and human perspectives. But I also have become much more aware of the visual possibilities of things I might not have considered photographing before. This detail shot of a cello might not be the ideal example, as the forms of string instruments have long interested photographers. However, I recall first “getting” the qualities of the large string instruments when I made a photograph of the entire lower string section early on in the project. I saw the obvious after making that shot, that these very large instruments, with their attractive shapes and rich wood textures and evidence of use and wear are visually interesting objects and evidence of the relationship between the player and his or her instrument.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Arch in Morning Light

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Broken Bow Arch, Morning - Morning light on Broken Bow Arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monumnet
Morning light on a backcountry arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Arch in Morning Light. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. October 25, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on a backcountry arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

In a land of many arches… this is another one. :-) I’ve come to understand that natural arches and natural bridges, which still seem miraculous to me when I see them and think about how they form, turn out to be almost absurdly common features in the American Southwest. My first exposure was, not surprisingly, at Arches National Monument, where there are more of them than you might believe if you did not see them with your own eyes. They seem to come in all forms and sizes: impossibly slender and long, small and delicate, big and blocky, towering above the surrounding terrain, invisible unless you happen to look the right direction in the right light, short and stubby, and seemingly infinite additional variations.

Since my first acquaintance with the more famous specimens at Arches National Park, I have had the opportunity to see a few others in less accessible locations. This one required a long and convoluted hike through terrain that held its own attractions apart from the arch – in fact, I had almost forgotten about the arch when we reached it. The photograph is from a high point near the arch – on the opposite side from our approach – and from the shady side of the feature at this time of day. From many vantage points it stands a bit too much against the sky, which did not seem to me to be the most attractive background. From this spot it was possible to find a camera position where the sky was out of the frame, and this allows the shape and texture of the arch to be seen in the light reflected from nearby walls.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.