Tag Archives: california

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

Aspen Grove, Yellow and Green

October 20, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The transition from green to yellow foliage in an eastern Sierra Nevada aspen grove

Aspen color is a more complex and fascinating thing than what if first seems — and that first impression is quite a strong one to begin with. The first thing most of us see when we learn about aspens is simply “brilliant color,” enhanced by the tree’s juxtaposition with other spectacular landscape elements and amplified when the trees are seen in vast and colorful groves. In fact, there are few things more astonishing than a huge grove of aspens at peak fall color, stretching up and across a sub-alpine landscape on a fall day.

Once you catch the aspen bug — and have seen quite a few of those vast and colorful groves — subtler things start to become interesting. There are too many elements to fully describe them all in this little post, but they include the patterns produced by the white trunks, almost regardless of leaf color. The color shadings are more varied than we first see — from the first lime-green hints of upcoming color change, through the spectrum of colors encompassing yellow and gold and red and orange and brown, and including the subtler effects of brown and black leaves late in the season. When I saw this vignette (within a much larger grove) my firs thought was perhaps “not quite at peak,” but I think that the combination of a few leaves just arriving at near-peak color against the background of leaves yet to change is pretty interesting, too, especially when the scene is cut through by those stark white 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

Eastern Escarpment

October 19, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada rises from desert hills to rugged aretes lit by dawn sun

Depending on how you approach the range, the Sierra Nevada presents two quite different aspects to the visitor. For many decades, as a long time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was only familiar with one of them. I always came to the range from the west, on long drives over coastal mountains and then across the Great Central Valley. As I approached the east side of the Valley I would encounter the low hills, at first almost imperceptible, that humbly mark the beginning of this might range. Because it tilts upward from the west, the western slopes are overall very gradual. Rising through these first low hills, the grass and oak covered landscape raises over a distance of many miles, and it is quite a while before the range starts to feel like “the mountains,” and many hours before the visitor arrives in the high alpine zone of rugged granite peaks. Even here, to the west of the crest there are plenty of gentle valleys and meadows.

The east side is a radically different world, as I finally began to understand two or three decades ago. The eastern base of the range is an arid near-desert place, made more so by Los Angeles’ historic draining of east side waters that once irrigated now-dry places and once filled today’s dusty playas with shallow lakes. The Sierra rises abruptly from this lower landscape, and in places you can look up nearly 10,000′ to the highest summits — you stand in desert and look at alpine peaks, and you see every zone in between. I made this photograph at dawn from one such valley location where the landscape that of sagebrush and playa and alkali lakes. From this spot I looked across low hills with the first coniferous trees toward the abrupt rise of the eastern foothills, backed by jagged and rugged slopes leading upward to high peaks.

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

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

New Louie’s Inc, Evening

October 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening scene as markets close in San Francisco

This photograph comes from another evening spent doing street photography in the late afternoon and on into the night in downtown San Francisco. The plan was to meet up with a small group of like-minded photographers who like urban subjects and the magic of the city at night. The other arrived before I did, and we finally caught up with one another on a street in a non-tourist area of the Chinatown district of San Francisco.

This street has fascinated me for a long time. Most often I’ve passed through in the morning, when produce trucks line the streets, and the sidewalks are crowded with people doing their shopping. At those times I often feel like a bit of an outsider, interjecting myself into a community that is not my own, but I’m attracted to many things about it and I return frequently. On this evening visit the neighborhood had a very different feeling. There were far fewer people out and about, and the shops that are so busy in the morning were now closing down one by one. Tables of merchandise were cleared and put away, sidewalks swept, shutters rolled down, and one by one the shops closed. Now, without the crowd of people, a different visual quality appeared, with the primary elements being the colors of the shops, signs and awnings, and the shapes of and relationships among the scattered tables, bins, and shelves.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

The Crossing

October 17, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two men wait on the sidewalk for the traffic light to change, San Francisco

Taking a brief break from the stream of photographs of eastern Sierra Nevada fall colors — I think I need to rest my eyes! — I’m next sharing a couple more San Francisco street photography images from early September of this year, when I joined a group of fellow photographers to wander about in some downtown areas. We started in the late afternoon, with the plan of shooting in the sunset and twilight and then continuing right on into the night. This photograph comes from a later hour, shortly before I wrapped up for the evening.

We eventually ended up in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. This is, of course, a popular tourist area during the daytime, but it has a different character in the evening as the shops close up. From here we wandered down to the Union Square area, where there are almost always crowds of shoppers, tourists, and people passing through. At about this point it was time for me to head back to where I started, so I left the group and started back toward my car, stopping occasionally to make a few more photographs. In a way, this photograph is a bit of a lie and a contrivance — though all photographs are such to some extent. Here, in a rather busy area, I spotted the two men along at a corner and by choosing my composition careful (and quickly, this being street photography!) I managed to exclude the rest of the bustling scene and place them against a sort of amorphous form of the back ground building and in front of the geometry of the cross walk.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: california

Aspen Grove, Yellow and Green

Eastern Escarpment

New Louie’s Inc, Evening

The Crossing

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