Tag Archives: california

Photographs: Music & Musicians

Classical Musicians — Four Photographs

November 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This post includes a set of four black and white photographs from my ongoing project photographing classical musicians.

Musicians backstage preparing for the concert.

Musicians backstage at the California Theater, preparing for a Symphony Silicon Valley concert

Timpanist Robert Erlebach and conductor Karen Kamensek consult the score during a break in a Symphony Silicon Valley rehearsal

Conductor Karen Kamensek and violinist Allison “Gigi” Dang consult the conductor’s score during a rehearsal break

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.

History, Photographs: Photographers

Holding an Artifact

November 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Holding a Brett Weston negative — “Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1946”

During our visit to the Weston Home at Wildcat Hill in late September, Kim Weston shared a wide range of photographs and photographic objects , and accompanying stories, with us in his studio. (That’s him at the lower right of the frame.) He shared and talked about work by many of the Westons, from Edward Weston to himself. He even passed around various photographs and objects for closer inspection, including this negative of a very important Brett Weston photograph, “Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1946.”

And — no surprise! — he has a lot of stories to tell. If I have this one correct, it goes sort of this way. Brett Weston’s photographs are very much about the print and the initial image in the negative served as source material for the final interpretation. That interpretation was the thing — not the negative. As I understand it, he wanted the prints, not the negatives, to remain as his legacy, and he had announced that we was going to destroy the negatives for many great photographs. He discussed this with Edward (?) Weston, who did not feel the same way about limiting editions and who apparently convinced Brett to let him pick a few negatives to save. Brett agreed, Edward chose, Brett went and brought back the selected negatives… which he had defaced with a hole punch. (You can see the holes near the four corners of this negative.)

Commentary, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Too Many Aspens!

November 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yesterday I realized that I had sort of forgotten a huge batch of aspen photographs from this fall in the eastern Sierra Nevada. How can one “forget” a big batch of such photographs, you ask? I simply became busy working on several other projects and after I moved on to them I stopped thinking about the earlier work.

I have so many of them — with more to come! — that I’m not going to string them out and post one at a time. Instead, here is one big batch of them all in one post. To save typing, all are from the eastern Sierra Nevada in October 2014

(more below…)

Continue reading Too Many Aspens! →

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Strata and Columns

November 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

For years I have passed by California’s Red Rock Canyon State Park on my way to or from other places, most often Death Valley National Park. My winter route between the San Francisco Bay Area and Death Valley almost inevitably takes me south over Tehachapi Pass and then north, where the highway cuts through this state park. Every time I have passed through I have marveled at the beautiful rock formations rising from the desert and thought about stopping… but kept driving, anxious either to get to DEVA or to get home after a long time on the road.

This time we made a plan to stop, booking a motel in a nearby town for the night to more or less force a stop. We made a fairly brief visit, but we did go this time. This visit, although brief, may have finally cracked the door open a bit to the idea of returning and photographing here again. Being unfamiliar with the park I cannot be sure, but I would guess that this formation may be one of its “icons.” It stands in an easily visited location and presents a striking appearance. It also seems to me to tell a bit of a story. One of the first things that got my attention is the way that its thick band of red rock tilts the opposite direction from the similar rock in the sculpted cliffs that stand behind it. It seems to me that this piece must have dropped off the face (probably with a big bang and lots of dust!), landed in the softer material at the base of the cliff, and momentarily leaned toward falling over to the right, but then managed to just keep its balance enough to be locked into this off-kilter tilted position.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: california

Classical Musicians — Four Photographs

Holding an Artifact

Too Many Aspens!

Strata and Columns

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