Tag Archives: drops

Photographs: Nature

Blue and Yellow Flower

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Blue and Yellow Flower
A blue and yellow flower, with morning dew, photographed against a dark background.

Blue and Yellow Flower. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A blue and yellow flower, with morning dew, photographed against a dark background.

While this may not be a sunflower, at least it is blue and yellow. This isn’t flower that I recognize — though I was told its name at one point, a name that I had not heard before. It was growing down close to the ground, in a shady area at the garden where we were recently photographing.

I can’t claim to be any particular sort of flower photographer, even though I am attracted to such photographs and do try my hand at them occasionally. (Someone else in our household specializes in photographing small things like flowers.) This flower and those around it were still covered with early morning moisture.

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

Morning Green

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Morning Green
Garden plants after morning watering.

Morning Green. © Copyright 2022.G Dan Mitchell.

Garden plants after morning watering.

After focusing on a rather dry sort of landscape for much of the past month, recently I have had a couple of chances to photograph much more colorful and lush subjects here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Due to the seasonal change — yes, spring is on its way — and the effects of another drier-than-usual winter, plants are sprouting and even blossoming here.

We have made a couple of trips to a large local garden that is open to the public, usually going on a less-busy weekday morning and trying to arrive as soon as the place opens. It seems to me that on these weekday mornings there is a lot of garden work taking place — watering, trimming, pruning, planting, and cleaning up. Quite a few of the photographs I have made have involved the detritus of these activities: old leaves and blooms on the ground, flowers a bit past their peak, and in this case some plants that had been watered moments before I arrived.

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

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Commentary

Leaves in Rain

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Leaves in Rain
Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Leaves in Rain. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Californians have been dealing with strange weather patterns for more than a decade now — a five-year drought, a few years of way above average rainfall, and then the current season that has been almost completely rainless up until now. As I write this the pendulum is apparently about the swing the other direction, and the forecasts for my part of the state predict an “atmospheric river” storm later this week that has the potential to bring absurd amounts of rain over the course of a few days. It seems to be feast or famine, though the amount of recent rain famine has been the biggest concern.

While this photograph is evocative of the weather we’re about to have, it comes from a naturally wetter place a few hundred miles to the north, namely Portland, Oregon. On a spring visit a few years back we ended up in one of that cities urban parks on a cloudy and wet day, and as we wandered though gardens I stopped to photograph these leaves.

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

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Showers

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Sierra Showers
Afternoon thundershower clouds reflected in the surface of a raindrop-dappled alpine lake, Kings Canyon National Park.

Sierra Showers. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Afternoon thundershower clouds reflected in the surface of a raindrop-dappled alpine lake, Kings Canyon National Park.

As I was getting ready to post this photograph I was pondering, as usual, what to write about it. As I considered the focus of what I ended up writing here today it occurred to me that this one photograph could be the starting point for an entire book. (Don’t worry, I’ll keep this post considerably shorter than that.) It could naturally lead to subjects including my visits and return visits to certain locations in the Sierra, the experience of spending long periods in the backcountry, what and how to see there, the sensory experiences of things like afternoon rain, how non-iconic subjects evoke these things, my good fortune in photographing the backcountry in the company of good friends during the last decade, and much more…

But that’s far too much for this post, so I’ll just share a little background. A group of five of us isolated ourselves at a very high backcountry location for a week back in 2013. We photographed morning and evening every day, in very diverse conditions, and we hung out together through the slower midday hours. There were many lakes nearby, and on this afternoon I had walked the short distance to one of them and was photographing when the afternoon showers began. For me, this photograph conjures up all of the associations I have with that trip and with afternoons like this one.

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.