Tag Archives: day

A Little Story About Posting Daily Photographs

January 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

First, why the heck do I post a new photograph every day?! I have been doing this now for more than five years, believe it or not. (I don’t know for certain when I started, but by dividing the number of photographs in my online gallery by 365, it looks like it may have been almost seven years now!) I have no illusions that it is possible for me to post something close to an incredible photograph 365 times each year, so for this purpose I’ll settle for merely credible! One impetus for this project probably comes from my background in music, where practice is regarded as central to developing and maintaining the ability to function artistically – and a goal is to do the thing so regularly and so often that the doing becomes almost intuitive and the technical stuff becomes less and less daunting – though it never quite disappears. So my daily photographs are essentially the part of my “practice” that I’ve chosen to make public.

Since I’m almost continually producing new photographs – continuing down familiar paths and trying to improve the results or trying things that are new to me – I generate a lot of photographs. My primary goal is to line them up for posting at the blog on that new-photo-per-day basis. I often have at least some photographs ready to go and queued up for posting well ahead of time.

Typically, I might have a week’s worth or so in the pipeline, though there is some variation. On a few occasions I have had nothing ready and I actually had to go out and make a photograph for posting on the day it was posted! On other occasions I’ve had a much bigger line-up of photos ready to go. (Right now my “problem” is that I have too many in the pipeline! I’ve already selected and lined up photographs through the end of March! This makes it hard to post work that I’m doing right now that I would like to share. For example, I have more work from a recent shoot at Point Lobos, some long-exposure work from early January, and there are still photographs from my extensive photography in Utah last fall. (I’m also working on a long term project to photograph musicians, and none of that work has appeared here yet.)

When a new photograph is ready, it becomes part of a “sharing workflow” that accomplishes the following:

I queue the photograph up at my blog, scheduling its appearance there weeks or even months in advance. I write the descriptive text at the time I put the image in the queue.
Out of habit, I also post the image to my old Flickr account as part of the process to queue it at my blog. (Hint: you can often see my photographs at Flickr before they show up elsewhere, since I have no way to delay the posting there.)
On the day when the photo finally shows up at my blog, I do a quick bit of copying and pasting to create the daily posts at Facebook and Google Plus. The Facebook posts are rather minimal, usually containing little more than the image and the title and basic description, along with a link to the blog. I incorporate more information with the Google Plus posts, including an excerpt from the full post at my blog along with a link back to the blog post. A blog plugin also automatically shares a message on Twitter and a very brief one at Facebook.
From time to time I may also share some photographs at 500px or Pinterest, though that is not a regular part of my workflow.

There are a few variations on this process. At times I’m in places where I simply cannot go online and post – perhaps I’m backpacking or just too busy. When this happens, Facebook may only show the tiny thumbnail image that is automatically posted from the blog, and I may have to forego the usual larger image. I can use a Chrome browser plugin to pre-schedule new Google Plus posts on those days.

Sometimes people wonder how it is possible to find time to do all of this and whether it is worthwhile. The first question is easier to answer. At this point, I have the whole process simplified to the point that it actually takes me very little time. The second question is a bit trickier, but on balance it is worthwhile – though there are days when I think about how it might be a bit easier to simply not post every day… but then I do it anyway! :-)

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

Dawn, New Years Day 2013

January 5, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Dawn light above a San Joaquin Valley marsh on New Years Day, 2013

I didn’t manage to post a real New Years Day photo on New Years Day this year… since I was out and about well before dawn on that morning, thinking that it would be even more fun to greet the new year in the field than to just share a post about it! We were staying in the Sierra foothills and had enjoyed a wonderful New Years eve with friends in the area the evening before. Although we had planned to “call it a night” soon enough to turn in early in anticipation for a pre-5:00 a.m. wake-up call, it was after midnight when we finally got to bed.

We were up at 4:45 – yes, on New Years Day! – and out the door shortly after 5:15, and on our way out into the San Joaquin Valley, where a small group of us assembled at about 6:30 in the darkness. After sleepy “Happy New Year!” wishes we headed off into the first pre-dawn light to look for geese and cranes and other critters. Within a few minutes I stopped along the levee road by these trees to make my first real photograph of the new year as the first light began to turn high clouds over the Sierra a beautiful shade of pink.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Wildlife

Trumpeter Swans, Field

December 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small group of trumpeter swans on a misty day in a Skagit Valley field, Washington

Finding myself in a wonderful place to photograph birds, but without the (rather long!) lens I would usually rely on, I had to think differently about how to photograph the migratory birds of Skagit Valley, Washington earlier this week. I was in Washington for something else entirely, but had brought along a minimal kit “just in case…” but wasn’t really thinking that bird photography might be on the agenda until plans changed and I found myself with nearly a full day free. So despite having nothing longer than 200mm, I decided to drive up there from Seattle and see what I could find.

Among the locals, I hear that the area is especially renowned for eagles – which I saw and (barely) photographed a year ago. But I’m also, and perhaps predominantly, fascinated by the snow geese and the trumpeter swans. The geese remind me of the very similar Ross’s geese that I photograph in California, but the trumpeter swans are birds that I don’t really get to see at home. While the geese collect in huge flocks of many thousands of birds, creating an audio uproar that must be heard to be believed, the swans don’t seem to be such social creatures nor nearly as noisy. When I’ve seen them, they collect in small groups, sometimes very small or perhaps including a few dozen individuals. They seem to assemble quietly – apart from the occasional “trumpeting” – and don’t do anything like the swirling, flocking behavior of the geese. Instead, even so often a couple of them will lift off – taking a long, shallow trajectory like an overloaded airliner lifting off – and then fly at low levels across fields.

Having only my “short” 200mm telephoto, it proved nearly impossible to photograph them in the usual bird photography style – trying to come as close as possible to filling the frame with a bird or two. Instead, I started by thinking about how I could incorporate the birds into the landscape. Here, near the end of an empty road, I turned onto an even emptier road and slowly drove up to where I was reasonably close to this group. I remained in the car, using it as my “blind” so as not to disturb the birds, and I sat quietly making a few photographs as they fed in the field. I decided to go with an interpretation of the subject that did not attempt for anything like objective realism, instead trying to evoke the subjective aspects of these birds, caught in a momentary beam of sunlight against a misty and rainy sky and hills.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Emerging Daylily Flower

August 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An emerging daylily flower in the Commemorative Garden at the Gene and Irene Wockner Hospice Center.

I’m posting today with little additional commentary. This photograph was made at the beginning of August during a quiet hour-long walk in the garden of the Wockner Hospice in Kirkland, Washington, where there was a large bed of these flowers in a shady area.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: day

Dawn, New Years Day 2013

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Emerging Daylily Flower

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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.