Tag Archives: dissipate

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Dissipating Structures

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Dissipating Structures
Dissipating Structures

Dissipating Structures. Chicago, Illinois. August 2, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Distorted reflections of a crane and Chicago buildings

Every so often I wonder about architects. For the most part we think of them — or at least I do — as folks who are as much about logic and structure as they are about design and form, and when they are about design they don’t usually seem to be particularly whimsical. (With notable exceptions.) Whimsical doesn’t fit the image or the expectations of the typical big business clients who might commission such towers as those found in an urban center like Chicago — these see like people who are more interested in cultivating an image of stability and wealth and power.

But then I look at the window reflections that are the inevitable result of placing plexiglas covered buildings in close proximity to one another and I have to wonder. Are these folk aware of the almost hallucinogenic shapes and forms that appear on the sides of these buildings? In fact, how many people on the streets are away of the abstract and bizarre visual show that is often going on overhead? Here, against the clean and mathematically perfect face of this building, neatly divided into equal grids of alternating shades of blue, appear bizarre visual monstrosities. A red construction crane warps upwards and leans precariously to the right as its upper elements simply fall apart into twists and curlicues. Sections of the reflected buildings are alternately minimized and expanded to gross degrees, and if you look closely at the resulting patterns you might find anything from aerial fish to faces to whatever else you want to imagine.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Desert Mountains, Rain

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Desert Mountains, Rain
Desert Mountains, Rain

Desert Mountains, Rain. Death Valley National Park, California. April 2, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rain falling from a dissipating afternoon storm is backlit above desert mountains, Death Valley National Park

This was anything but an ordinary Death Valley day—though I’m not sure that any Death Valley day is likely to be ordinary. We began very early, awakening a couple of hours before dawn. The plan was to be far up in the Panamint Mountains before sunrise, in the hope of photographing the first light over the Valley from a high and wild place. I try to assess the weather conditions in the dark in any way that I can—checking wind, looking to see if stars are visible, and so forth. In the darkness I could tell that only a few stars were visible and that their light was muted, all of which suggested cloudiness. This was, of course, in line with a weather forecast that mentioned things like showers and snow flurries and clouds. However, you can’t tell what will happen until you go out there and watch it happen, so we headed up into the mountains.

Most of the story of this day will wait for photographs of that early morning and the rest of the day in the Panamint range that followed. However, for now I will mention that it was cloudy, it was cold, and it snowed. Later in the day the weather began to clear and we saw some sun before we came back down from the mountains, with plans for an evening shoot in a different location on our minds. As we descended we noticed precipitation in the mountains to our north and west—more or less in the Cottonwood Mountains. We stopped and photographed this weather before heading down into the Valley. Our plans were changing with the weather, and we ended up heading to a high place with a good open view of much of the Valley, figuring that the changing light from the clouds might present quickly changing opportunities. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at our location we could see that the clouds over the Cottonwood range were quickly thinning, and that backlight was illuminating the last rain falling over the receding ridges of this range, creating a very bright and constantly changing effect.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Rat Rock Island, Winter Sky

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Rat Rock Island,, Winter Sky
Rat Rock Island,, Winter Sky

Rat Rock Island,, Winter Sky. San Francisco Bay, California. January 6, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Clouds from a dissipating winter storm above Rat Island and the northern San Francisco Bay

For such a beautiful little island, this place certainly has a nasty name! I have intended to visit this place for a few years now, but had never quite gotten around to it – so I used a San Francisco photowalk devoted to “long exposure photography” as the impetus to finally make it. We had started much earlier in the morning in the Marin Headlands, photographing San Francisco Bay, and at that time a winter weather front was making its way through the area and producing a rather cloudy dawn. Leaving there, the group headed to the small state park where this scene is located. I arrived there before almost anyone else, so I headed to this location and had it to myself for a few minutes.

The previous evening some had been discussing the weather prospects, and I had pointed out that often the most interesting skies come on the heels of awful weather, and this moment serves as an example. An hour earlier and a few miles away, the overcast was thick and gray, but here the trailing edge of the storm was bringing layers of clouds that were thinning and allowing the early morning light through. But this quality of sky and light lasted only a short time, and less than an hour later these beautiful early morning clouds were largely gone.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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

Evening Clouds, Tuolumne River Valley

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Evening Clouds, Tuolumne River Valley
Evening Clouds, Tuolumne River Valley

Evening Clouds, Tuolumne River Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. September 20, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening clouds from dissipating afternoon thunderstorms in early evening light above the Tuolumne River Valley, Yosemite National Park.

I recently posted a photograph of wildly colorful sunset clouds made a bit earlier on this same evening this past September as I was concluding a week-long photography backpack into the Yosemite back-country. By the time I had the photograph shown here, the most psychedelic of the sunset colors had begun to fade (though the reddish coloration on the granite is from that light) and I turned my attention to the thinning clouds.

Not much earlier, these clouds had been part of a massive line-up of huge thunderstorms over Yosemite high-country. I had escaped the rains since I was now in the relative lowlands around Glen Aulin, but it was clear that these had been some powerful localized storms. But as typically happens on many Sierra evenings, the giant storms soon dissipated and the clouds thinned to transparency as the day came to an end. By the time I made this photograph only a bit of direct sunlight was striking the tops of the highest remaining clouds.

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.