Tag Archives: curve

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Concrete Landscape

June 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A curving freeway ramp encircles a downtown building in the urban landscape of San Francisco

Another morning trip to San Francisco, another walk through the City, and another photograph of urban landscapes. This photograph is from a mid-June morning walk that started at the Caltrain station, headed over toward China Basin, and then ambled back toward Market Street before looping back to the trains station.

Several freeways cut through this section of downtown San Francisco: 101 on its north-south route, 280 arriving from the Peninsula, and 80 connecting to the East Bay. Here the freeway is high above the city, which has the advantage of keeping city streets open but the disadvantage of creating a large path of somewhat seeding “beneath the freeway” areas and sometimes forcing the city itself to conform to the contours and paths of the highways. In some cases the result can be interesting, and in this location where this strange landscape of vertical columns and nested curves is the result.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Light and Dark Sandstone

May 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A bit or remaining red sandstone sits on top of an underlying layer of lighter rock, Point Lobos State Reserve

Near the end of April I found time for a quick visit to Point Lobos State Reserve, south of Carmel in the Monterey Peninsula/Big Sur region. This is a place I have photographed for many years, so I know specific rocks and trees quite well. Photographing here often provides a sort of tension between continuing to refine how I see things that I have known for decades and trying to locate new subjects. In addition to the constantly changing patterns of the Pacific Ocean itself and the mostly stable elements of the rocky shoreline and forests, the weather always changes and the wildlife provides unending variations.

When I decided to go there on this morning I should have remembered that this is the weekend of the annual Big Sur Marathon, which mostly closes sections of the coast highway in the area for an hour or more at a time. But I didn’t remember… until I got to the Carmel Valley road block. I lined up for the periodic car caravans that were scheduled to leave every 90 minutes, picked up a cup of coffee and waited. Eventually we followed a highway patrol vehicle down the highway, and I soon turned off into an almost entirely deserted Point Lobos State Reserve. The solitude I found on this day when few others came to the park made up for the delay in getting there! Because the light was filtered through high clouds I decide to spend some time photographing these beautifully sea-sculpted sandstone formations along the rocky shoreline.

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

Burned Forest, Twisting Branches

March 13, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bare, twisted branches in burned forest, Yosemite National Park

For a number of years, Yosemite National Park has allowed naturally set fires to more or less burn themselves out under supervision, and management fires are set regularly in areas including Yosemite Valley. For many of us there is a natural negative response to this, at least initially, since we were brought up on a stead Smoky Bear diet of “fire is bad!” It turns out that not all fires are bad. In fact, the healthy forests depend on fire – to clear out underbrush and reduce the fuel load and even to prompt the renewal of plant life. Ironically, there is some thought that one reason for the very big and very destructive fires that have occurred more recently is that fires have been suppressed for so long that too much fuel has built up in the forest, allowing fires that might otherwise be “healthy” to become firestorms that destroy even mature trees.

The evidence of fire is found in many areas of the park, including Yosemite Valley. If you visit late in the season you might find a managed fire underway, closing off sections of the forest and spreading smoke. (While I worry about the health effects of the smoke, I have learned to use it photographically but finding ways to use the haze in my images.) For some time I have worked to find ways to photograph the burned areas. They can have a kind of stark beauty in the right light and when looked at in just the right ways. I had stopped in a more traditional meadow, full of dormant winter grasses and leafless winter trees, when I looked behind myself to see on of the managed burn areas, and these curving and twisting bare limbs against a background of scorched trunks.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Dune Forms, Evening

January 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Shadows from evening light slanting across curved dune forms, Death Valley National Park

Having photographed here many times, I know these and other dunes of Death Valley fairly well – well enough at this point to have some ideas about where and when to photograph them and to be less interested in the more familiar views. I had spent the majority of the day, starting well before sunrise, exploring and photographing an entirely different area of the park, but as I did so I had formed a general plan to head to the dunes at the end of the day and photograph them in evening light. I had a bit of time after finishing with the first subject, so I headed back to camp to hang out a bit.

I may have hung out just a bit too long! My plans for the dunes were not exactly fixed, though I knew that I wanted to investigate a less visited area of lower dunes away from the main area and that I wanted to be out there shortly before sunset – to shoot the sunset light and then to continue shooting right on past sunset and into the beautiful and subtle dusk light. By the time I got to the dunes, I figured out that the winter sun sets a bit earlier than I had realized, and I had to hurry out to my shooting area. Although I did not have a specific idea of what I would shoot, I had some general ideas involving slanting light, shadows, curving shapes, texture of sand, and possibly some vegetation. But once on the scene I had to work extremely quickly, as the long shadows of the low angle sun moved quickly across the sand, and a new composite of light and shadow would appear only to move and then disappear in a matter of seconds or perhaps a minute or two. Within moments of making this photograph, the last warm sun on the dunes was gone, and I was left with the cold post-sunset light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: curve

Concrete Landscape

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Light and Dark Sandstone

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Burned Forest, Twisting Branches

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Dune Forms, Evening

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

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