Tag Archives: detail

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley

Sand Tufa, Mono Lake

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Sand Tufa, Mono Lake - Early morning light on details of sand tufa formations, Mono Lake
Early morning light on details of sand tufa formations.

Sand Tufa. Mono County, California. July 14, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light on details of sand tufa formations, Mono County.

I have wanted to photograph this subject for some time. The sand tufas are not found in the same location as the better-known “tufa towers” that are so often photographed, and they are smaller and somewhat subtler (if that is the right word) subjects. If you weren’t aware of what you were looking for, it would be very easy to pass right by them and barely notice their presence at all. They also appear to be very fragile, so great care should be taken if you ever happen to come across them. Walk around, not over or through them, and minimize your impact on them to the greatest extent possible. If you come across examples, it is probably best to not blast a lot of specific information to the world. I don’t know all of the details of their formation, but judging by their locations and by the recent history of lower lake levels, I suspect that they may have been underwater before the historically recent extraction of water from the eastern Sierra by Los Angeles.

If you are thinking of looking for an interesting and easy to shoot photographic subject, don’t bother with the sand tufa. You’ll probably have much better luck and more fun shooting the impressive and better known and larger “tower” features at other areas. These small structures do not tower above anything. Some are only inches tall, and the largest are just a few feet tall. Their natural color is a muted and, let’s be honest, boring gray color. Their location does not particularly allow them to be paired with more impressive and distant large-scale landscape features such as the expanse of the lake’s surface or the surrounding mountains and hills, with the possible exception of certain kinds of cloud formations. When I went there I had some pre-conceived ideas about I might photograph them, perhaps including the Sierra’s eastern escarpment in the images, but these ideas did not pan out. However, by shooting in the first few minutes of light and working with a long focal length to crop tightly I found some interesting fluted patterns to work with.

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.

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

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House

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Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House - Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.
Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

Interior Detail, War Memorial Opera House. San Francisco, California. June 29, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Entrance to stairways at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.

We are fortunate to have season tickets to San Francisco Opera. (No. Not box seats. Not even orchestra seats. But, still, the opera… :-) So we spend a fair amount of time in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco and wander around the place a bit before shows and during intermissions. I find the whole place architecturally interesting, and some day I would love to have an opportunity to go in there with all of the right gear and have free run of the place to make photographs.

But for now I have to make do. This particular entry and the stairwell beyond have intrigued me for a while. Long before I made this photograph I had made a few iPhone images of the scene and thought about what it contains and some of the reasons that it must attract me. Last summer we went to the San Francisco Opera performance of Wagner’s “Ring,” and due to the somewhat extreme length of the component operas, many of the performances started fairly early – this one started at 7:00 p.m., meaning that there was plenty of light coming in from the windows to the right of the scene. On this evening I had brought along a camera body and a single 50mm prime, which turned out to be just about the right lens for this scene.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Rhyolite Ghost Casino

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Rhyolite Ghost Casino - The "Rhyollite Ghost Casino" was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada
The "Rhyollite Ghost Casino" was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada

Rhyollite Ghost Casino. Rhyolite, Nevada. January 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The “Rhyollite Ghost Casino” was originally the railroad station in what is now the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada.

This building in the ghost town of Rhyolite was originally a (very expensive) railway station that was abandoned when the town itself was abandoned after the nearby mines ran out of profitable ore in the early 1900s. According to several sources I have read, the building was then turned into a bar and casino, and many years later was for a time a curio shop and museum. Today it is boarded up and behind cyclone fences – more off-limits than almost any other structure in the ghost town.

I would live to get beyond the fencing and photograph this building more closely. It looks, in some ways, surprisingly modern for something that was constructing in the middle of nowhere about a century ago, and there are a number of interesting elements in the architecture. (I have photographed some of them, and eventually I’ll perhaps post a few.) The green sign on the front of the building appears to be a repurposed sign from the railroad station days. Underneath the fading “Rhyolite Ghost Casino” lettering, barely readable in this photograph, is and older sign declaring in larger print, “Rhyolite.” A walk around the structure reveals other interesting details, including one area that looks like it might have been a booth for a fortune-teller.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

Stones, Stained Granite

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Stones, Stained Granite
Stones, Stained Granite

Stones, Stained Granite. Yosemite National Park, California. September 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Granite stones rest on glaciated slab of stained granite near the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

Scared you, didn’t I? Thought I was going to miss posting a daily photograph, right? Yeah, both of you… ;-)

In any case, I may have mentioned previously that I’m a sucker for Sierra granite, especially the glaciated kind that is found almost everywhere you go in Yosemite National Park, from the Valley to areas surrounding the very highest peaks. (Some of the highest peaks escaped the glaciation themselves, but that’s a longer story for another time.) For me, some combination of glaciated granite slabs, a few “erratic” boulders (“erratics” being boulders moved from their source and left behind by retreating glaciers), some trees, and a bit of meadow grass, perhaps with a stream or lake nearby shouts “Sierra Nevada.”

This photograph does not include all of these Sierra ingredients but it does include the granite. I photographed this small bit of granite slab along a section of the Tuolumne River than runs through the back-country during a week-long backpack trip this past September. Something about the arrangement and color of the four larger stones against the water-stained underlying rock with its complex textures interested me. A lot of what is in the frame may not be visible in the small jpg version posted here, but there is a lot of detail in the frame: the texture or rock, crystal structures on some of the stones, several smaller pebbles, even a bit of dried pine needle.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.