Tag Archives: california

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Food Truck

July 7, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The food truck vendor behind dark blue glass

There is a bit of a strange story behind this photograph and a few others I made on the same evening. I was at a brewery that isn’t too far from where I live — we had been meaning to visit the place for some time, but when we heard there would be a Fujifilm camera demo event with loaners we decided to go. The Fujifilm representative showed up with a table full of goodies, and they let us check them out for about 15 minutes at a time.

I decided to go with something basic and try the X100f, the new Fujifilm rangefinder style camera. The photographic subjects were a bit limited. There were a couple of models hired to come in for the event, but that’s not really my thing. But the street photography presence of a beaten up old food truck was irresistible.

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

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

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

July 4, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An eastern Sierra grove of slender aspens with a hint of fall color remaining

There are interesting subtleties to the autumn transition of aspen color in the eastern Sierra. Unlike forests in some other areas, where the trees are more similar across wide areas, and thus tend to change colors at the same time, in the Sierra the color change has many variations of region, climate, moisture, and elevation. It is quite possible to arrive at a grove to find that almost all of the leaves have fallen… only to visit another grove not too far away where the color change is still getting underway.

This is a somewhat unusual little grove. The trees are very slender and crowded closely tighter. They are also, generally, smaller than those in the more-or-less typical Sierra aspen grove, where trees may be larger but also tend to be bent and even misshapen. These slender trees stand tall and straight, and at the time I made the photograph they had lost nearly all of their leaves, leaving a somewhat ghostly forest of bare trunks.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Shoreline, First Morning Light

July 1, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

First morning light comes to the forested shoreline of a Sierra Nevada backcountry lake

Near the end of the summer of 2014 I ventured into the Yosemite backcountry with a group of friends and photographers for a week of landscape photography work, first at a somewhat isolated lake and then near a more popular location. Although I’ve been a backpacker for years, accustomed to slogging along with a big backpack carrying all of my own gear, on this trip we were supported by pack train. In fact, we had stupendous support. All of our non-photographic gear was packed in to the first location. A few days later a pack train returned and moved our gear to the next location. (Meanwhile we hiked a cross-country route to get there, following a trajectory that stock could not use.) And finally at the end of the trip the packers came back again and schlepped our gear back out to civilization. I think I could get used to this — though I still very much enjoy the quiet and slow pace of self-contained backpacking.

We were at the lake for three or four days, long enough go venture beyond the obvious things that one sees when first arriving at a place. We had time to return to subjects and reconsider them a few days later, possibly in different light or at a different time of day. We were also able to push out boundaries outward a bit from the lake itself, climbing a few of the nearby promontories. And, always, we had the luxury of rolling out of sleeping bags before dawn, walking a few steps to the lakeshore, and beginning the day’s work. This photograph was made not more than five minutes from camp as the first light began to work down to lake level.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Eastside Dawn

June 26, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light on the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada near Long Valley

I regard myself as a bit of a sunrise connoisseur, having arisen well before dawn on many, many mornings — almost every morning, actually — and often gone out to observe and photograph at first light. Trust me, I do understand how hard it is to get out of a warm bed (or warm sleeping bag) in darkness, dress, and head out into the still-dark world. But if you can start to make it a habit there is a good chance that you’ll become addicted — and what better kind of addiction is there than to need to see the first light?

I photographed this on an autumn morning when I headed out into the valley to the east of the escarpment of the Sierra. It was, as it usually is in mid-October, very cold when we arrived. But it was also very quiet and still, and steam was rising from nearby springs and creeks as the sky began to listen and the first light touched the peaks of the Sierra. It worked its way down the face of the range, across fluted alpine faces, into deep mountain valleys, and eventually to the rounded, tree-covered hills at the foot of the range.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: california

Food Truck

Grove of Slender Aspens, Autumn

Shoreline, First Morning Light

Eastside Dawn

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