Tag Archives: charles

Morning Musings, Photographers, Tongue in Cheek

Morning Musings: Secret Lives of Landscape Photographers (9/12/14)

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Secret (Banjo) Lives of Landscape Photographers
Landscape photographers relaxing with a little banjo music. (L-R: Scot Miller, Charles Cramer, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Mike Osborne, Karl Kroeber, G Dan Mitchell)

Secret (Banjo) Lives of Landscape Photographers. Sierra Nevada, California. September 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Landscape photographers relaxing with a little midday banjo music. (L-R: Scot Miller, Charles Cramer, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Mike Osborne, Karl Kroeber, G Dan Mitchell)

I know the romantic notions about the daily lives of landscape photographers: days full of stunning golden hour light, incalculable beauties everywhere at every moment, the sublime life, rainbows, unicorns, etc. But the truth is more complex. Up before dawn and out into the cold without breakfast, shooting for hours until the light turns “blah,” then a long, boring midday period before the beautiful light returns hours later, then photographing into the frigid darkness.

It is often a struggle to find something useful to do in the backcountry during those midday hours. There are meals to eat, tents to tidy, and naps to take, but the hours are still long. We think we’ve found a solution. There’s nothing like a few hours of backcountry banjo ensemble music to make the time pass more quickly. Here the group nears the conclusion of the Adagietto movement of Mahler’s Symphony #5.

So, the next time you are in the Sierra Nevada backcountry and you pass a group of heavily laden photographers with tripods, folding chairs, and banjo cases on their backs, stop and say “hi.” ;-)

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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Events

Performance: Charles Cramer – Photographs and Music

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"Bare Trees, Red Leaves" - Charles Cramer
“Bare Trees, Red Leaves” – Charles Cramer

Many of you are familiar with Charlie Cramer’s beautiful photographs, but this week you have the chance to hear him make beautiful music, too. San Francisco Bay Area residents can join me and quite a few other photographers and musicians for a performance this weekend.

Saturday, January 18
7:30 PM
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
1957 Pruneridge Ave., Santa Clara

The concert features organists Charles Cramer, Mike Cala, and Darryl Parker… and Charlie will talk about his photography and host an exhibit of prints, and more. See you there!

“A camera trained on the organ console will give us a big-screen view of all the organists in action – and a close-up view of all the buttons they have to push! The program includes Cala performing an improvisation accompanying a short silent film and Cramer’s illustrated presentation, _’How I Became a Photographer and Met Ansel Adams.’_ He’ll talk about the many connections between music and photography. Adams started off as a pianist, and Cramer will present some rarely-heard recordings of Adams playing the piano. Also included will be some of Cramer’s photographs. (http://www.charlescramer.com/) You can see more of Cramer’s prints at the reception following the recital.”

(The photograph seen here is Charlie’s “Bare Trees, Red Leaves” – used by permission of the photographer)

Photographers, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

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Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light
Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Photographers Charles Cramer and Karl Kroeber working in golden hour light along the shore of a sub-alpine lake high in the Sierra Nevada back-country of Yosemite National Park.

Look! A photograph of people! :-)

I spent a week or so on the trail in the Yosemite back-country with a group of five other photographers this past September. We spent a good stretch of time in the area of some scenic lakes in the northeastern portion of the park. I was out for a week and a day, while the rest of the group spent a few additional days on the trail. Not too long after arriving at the nearby sub-alpine lake that was to be our home for several days, various members of the group started to explore the surrounding area, and on this evening we all decided to climb up the valley from “our” lake to the next higher lake along the drainage. We travelled more or less cross-country up the shallow valley of the creek between the two lakes, passing through beautiful meadows before arriving along the shore of this lake very late in the afternoon.

Once we arrived we more or less split up and focused on different portions of the lake and its surroundings. I mostly shot in one very small area where some beautiful granite boulders were embedded in the shoreline meadow, providing an interesting foreground for photographs across the lake to a nearby peak as the golden hour light arrived. At one point I noticed that my friends Charlie Cramer and Karl Kroeber were shooting nearby, so I paused from my landscape photography to pivot my camera in their direction and make a photograph of them as they worked the golden hour light.

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.
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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.

Community, Events, News, Photographers

Free Talk: ‘Lyrical Landscapes’ by Charles Cramer – This Week

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Noted landscape photograph photographer Charles Cramer is presenting a free talk on “Lyrical Landscapes” at De Anza College in Cupertino tomorrow –  Friday, June 10 at 6:00 p.m. The event is in the “Choral Hall,” room A11 near the Flint Center auditorium on campus. I have posted a campus map on Facebook with the location of the talk and nearby parking areas highlighted. Directions to the campus are also available online.

Charlie is one of the most highly regarded landscape photographers working today, and his knowledge and understanding of how to achieve a beautiful print is unparalleled. I believe that he will address these things along with some ideas about the parallels between his photography and music. Charlie is also a very talented musician – like a good number of other photographers. (Believe it or not, Charlie played organ at our wedding, oh so many years ago! :-)

I urge San Francisco Bay Area photographers to join me at De Anza on June 10 for this event!

(I’m a faculty member at De Anza and my office is in building where the event will take place. I’ll be there early, so drop by my office to say “hi” on the way in – my door will be open!)

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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.