Tag Archives: detail

Photographs: Nature

Succulent Leaves, Detail

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Succulent Leaves, Detail
Close up view of the patterns of succulent plant leaf edges.

Succulent Leaves, Detail. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Close up view of the patterns of succulent plant leaf edges.

Any time I end up in some sort of garden I seem to end up making at least a few photographs of the plants, often focusing on the shapes, lines, curves, textures and colors. In other words, most often I don’t make photographs that really show the plants in a botanically useful way, instead preferring to see them as essentially abstractions. One advantage of this approach, at least from my point of view, is that I don’t feel particularly limited to presenting an objectively accurate rendition of the subject, and I can instead choose to “see” the subject almost any way I want.

If I recall correctly, I made this photograph during a visit to Northern California a couple of years ago — the last time we visited the state and national redwood parks up there prior to this year. We stopped along the way up there and spent a night or two not far from Fort Bragg, where there is a lovely botanical garden. We took time out from the landscape photography to spend a few hours wandering there — mostly bent over close to the ground to photograph small things!

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Sandstone Detail

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Sandstone Detail
Detail of a section of a Utah sandstone rock face.

Sandstone Detail. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a section of a Utah sandstone rock face.

Remarkable things happen to the light deep down in the recesses of narrow sandstone canyons. The light is rarely direct, more often bouncing many times among red canyon walls. As it does, it softens, diffuses, and picks up the colors of the red rock. At the same time this landscape is open to a band of blue sky — what I think of as a giant blue light panel — and this color becomes part of the mix, though this light can follow a more direct path and fill in shadows. When you stop to consider what it really looks like, it almost seems unreal.

We were deep in such a canyon, spending a day heading deeper and deeper into it as it cut into the landscape. By the point at which I made this photograph, that band of blue sky was increasingly narrow and we encountered less and less direct sunlight.

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Rock Face

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Red Rock Face
Detail of a sandstone face, Capitol Reef National Park.

Red Rock Face. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a sandstone face, Capitol Reef National Park.

Many times when I have photographed in red rock country I find myself looking for other subjects that work with the sandstone to produce compositions — juxtapositions of features, trees, a bit of sky or clouds, water, light and shadow, and all of the other things that are part of the experience of this Southern Utah landscape. But at times it strikes me that the rock itself can be the entire subject. This is one of those photographs.

These masses of sandstone are remarkable on their own. They may first seem somewhat undifferentiated, but a closer look in the right light — in my view, the shaded light in canyons is ideal — reveals remarkable variations and detail. The color of the rock varies greatly depending upon time of day and, especially, the color of reflected light bouncing between anyone walls. Cracks and imperfections mark the rock even on the smoothest sections. And an infinite variety of markings combine on the surface — internal irregularities, color differences where the surface has been disturbed, and everywhere vertical lines formed by seeping and flowing water.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: San Francisco

Detail, Palace of Fine Arts

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Detail, Palace of Fine Arts
Detail of a small section of the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Detail, Palace of Fine Arts. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a small section of the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

Perhaps I was channelling my inner Atget when I made this photograph a few years back. I was wandering around San Francisco with a camera — a favorite activity in non-pandemic times — and I ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts near the waterfront. It is a remarkable place with a remarkable history. Originally constructed as part of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, it was the only structure that wasn’t taken down afterwards. Originally meant to be a temporary feature of the Exposition, it deteriorated and was eventually completely taken down in the 1960s and reconstructed by the mid-1970s. .

Something in the photograph illustrates how I do (and do not) see when I’m making photographs. One one hand I and other photographers often see things that others might miss. On the other hand, because we are focused on one way of seeing our subject we may entirely miss things that are completely obvious to others. Sometimes we “discover” these elements of our photographs later. (Someone pointed out that a difference between photography and painting is that the photographer cannot know everything in the image.) In this case, it was only years later that I noticed the rather striking symbols that appear on the surface of this building — symbols that no sane person would include today. This led me to some quick research that suggests that in 1915, and before the atrocities of WWII, the symbol in question had an entirely different meaning.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.