Tag Archives: curve

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Windows, Davies Symphony Hall

April 3, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Upper story windows on the curved facade of Davies Symphony Hall reflect the forms of nearby buildings, San Francisco.

This is another of the “opera house” photographs made within or from the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco during last summer’s San Francisco Opera performance of Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle. Even though (or perhaps “especially because?”) I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I virtually always have a camera with me when I go to The City – sometimes even for musical performances. Because it was June and the sun was setting late, and because the very long performance that night was to start at 7:00 p.m., there was still plenty of light before the performance to make photographs inside the Opera House and from its windows.

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, the home of the San Francisco Symphony, is directly across the street from the opera house, and each building’s upper floors provide a good view of the other building. For this photograph I snapped on a longer lens – yes, I’m pathetic enough to show up at an opera performance with more than one lens in my bag! – and was able to compose a tighter image of the curving upper floor windows of Davies Hall.

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

Eureka Valley Dunes, Dusk

January 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Pink dusk light on the Eureka Valley Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park.

On the second-to-last day of my January visit to Death Valley, I decided that it would make sense to exit the park to the north by way of miles of gravel roads heading into the northern portion of the park then out via more gravel and then some paved roads to Big Pine the next day, setting me up to return home over snow-free (in January!) Tioga Pass. After shooting early in the morning I headed back to my camp – at Stovepipe Wells at that time – had some breakfast, took down my camp, and packed. By the time I fueled up my car and headed north, I was a bit behind my planned schedule, but I figured that I might still make it to Eureka Valley in time to shoot in some late afternoon light.

A few hours later, after a drive including over 40 miles of gravel, I finally arrived at the site of these monumental dunes. At nearly 700 feet tall, they are supposedly the tallest dunes in the United States – or is it in North America? Eureka Vally is a lonely place, being a long drive on rough roads from any direction and almost completely without the civilized services found in some other areas of the park. When I got there, a family that had visited was just leaving, and there was one other photographer shooting high up on the dunes. I knew that I didn’t have enough time to try that, so I grabbed my gear and hiked over to one side of the dunes where their lower slopes begin to merge with the flat surface of the valley and where the last sun would hit the dunes. I shot there for a while and after the sun dropped below the ridges to the west I went looking for subjects that might benefit from the post-sunset soft and pink light. Very close to my “campsite” (which was in the back of my vehicle that night!) I saw these plants leading up toward the summit of the dunes and the higher stratified peaks beyond, and I made a few photographs in the rose-colored late light.

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

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

November 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The Tuolumne River enters Tuolumne River Canyon below the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp.

This photograph looks west from a rocky point along the Tuolumne River just below Glen Aulin in the Yosemite National Park back-country. In September I spent a total of four nights in this specific area and photographed in and around the granite bowl that rises from the river near the foreground rocks and spreads to the right of the area shown here. The photograph was made very late in the afternoon – it had been raining when I arrived at Glen Aulin but, as often happens in the Sierra, the clouds dissipated later in the day and the skies were starting to clear before sunset.

While my favorite Sierra landscape is at the elevations where the last small trees give way to alpine tundra meadows and the rocky slopes of the highest peaks, there is also something very compelling about these lower (from my point of view) elevation areas, and especially about this particular spot along the Tuolumne. Looking west from this point along the river I had the distinct feeling that I was standing more or less on a boundary between the higher and more alpine zones (exemplified by the Tuolumne Meadows area) and the beginnings of the lower areas in which I feel like I’m heading towards the Central Valley. Here, all of the really tall peaks are behind me (OK, some are to my right…) and before me the land overall drops towards the Valley, the slightly hazy light and air of which is in the far distance in this photograph.

Making this feeling even stronger for me is the fact that very close to Glen Aulin, the Tuolumne abruptly changes from a generally meandering river that descends very gradually for the most part past large meadows and forests to one that drops precipitously into an increasingly narrow and steep canyon surrounded by granite slabs and domes and peaks that begin to take on an appearance that reminds me of Yosemite Valley.

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

Corn Lily Leaves, Autumn

October 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Corn lily plants take on autumn colors in the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park.

The corn lily plants are among my favorite markers of the passage of the short high Sierra summer season. When the high country first opens and water is everywhere, the first shoots look almost like unhusked ears of corn as they come up in wet areas. (I don’t think this is where the plant gets its name – more on that in a moment.) They quickly grow to several feet tall, clustered in thick bunches, as the mosquito season arrives – and at this time they are incredibly lush and green. At this time they are also a favorite subject for photographers. A few seem to sprout much taller than others and produce clusters of white flowers. Then as August wears on and the soil begins to dry the plants also begin to lose their lush quality and brown areas appear and perhaps some spots and holes appear in the leaves. Often by the end of the month I can find some that are starting to turn one of several shades: golden-yellow, tan, or very dark brown verging on black. By mid September few healthy looking plants remain and the stalks (which look very much like corn stalks) begin to fall over to the ground.

It hardly matters where this particular group of corn lily plants was growing, so I’ll just say that they were within a few minutes of our camp site. I can hardly ever pass up the opportunity to try to photograph this plant, no matter which stage of its life it is currently going through. These had fallen over and were rapidly losing what remained of their green color.

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