Tag Archives: dusk

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Tree, Dusk

January 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese fly low past a tree at dusk, San Joaquin Valley

A small group of photographer friends spent (for the third year in a row) New Year’s Day in California’s San Joaquin Valley, greeting the dawn of 2015 by photographing it! Dawn wasn’t the only attraction — we are also drawn here by the landscape, the incredible wildlife (geese, cranes, egrets, herons, ibises, pelicans, and much more), and the beautiful winter light in this part of California. We began our day in the pre-dawn soft and foggy light and ended it in post-dust light when it finally became to dark to photograph.

For me this simple photograph of a field, a tree, and some geese evokes many of the things that draw me back to this landscape every winter. Even on a day when the tule fog thins, the atmosphere rarely seems to fully clear, and the dusk light is soft and mysterious and full of colors. And at this hour the geese seem to be settling in for the evening, often collecting in large groups in fields of ponds. As they do, they often seem to fly low between groups, flowing across the still landscape and between trees like the wind itself or like the flow of water.

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.

Night Photography, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

New York Sidewalk, Evening

December 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A busy New York City sidewalk in dusk light

We are fortunate to be able to visit New York City from time to time — perhaps once a year and occasionally more often. To anyone who thinks of me a “that landscape photographer guy,” it might seem a bit odd that I also love the intense urban environment of such a place — but I do. Although it can become overwhelming eventually — as almost everyone says, “I love to visit, but I couldn’t live there.” — it is also energizing. There is so much to see and do, whether or not it involves photography.

I always photograph when I visit New York. I photograph in a different way than I do when I’m out in the American West. For example, I work with handheld cameras and tend to work while on the move. But I think that I also see the place at least a bit through the eyes of a landscape photographer, and I think of the city as a place to photograph the “urban landscape.” Although I’ve done night photography for more than a decade, recently I’ve gotten more interested in handheld urban night street photography. This photograph of a little evening street scene with pedestrians walking in and out of the light pools cast from business windows is one example.

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

Potholes, Dusk

November 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light on the curving pothole forms of Utah sandstone

The grand landscape is a wonderful and impressive thing, but a bit of dusk light on curving rock can evoke the fundamental qualities of a place. This was my final photograph of the day, made just before there was no longer enough light for the kinds of photograph I had in mind, and as it was about to become to dark to find my way out of this landscape. Earlier I had begun by photographing subjects that were perhaps more clearly specific to this location, but as I continued to photograph and as the light changed I made photographs that I think are less about the particular location and more about the feeling of such places.

The light was tricky on this evening. There had been sunlight earlier, and at times it had been the beautiful soft yet direct light of the sun coming through high clouds. But it has also been very muted at times, as the clouds became thicker, producing the a kind of flat and colorless light that is challenging. But earlier clouds can lead to later sky color as the sun drops near the horizon and lights up these same dull clouds from underneath. As I finished with some of the more obvious photographic subjects I began to look at the patterns and colors of the rocks as possible subjects of more abstract images, and it was at about this point that the sky opened up for a few minutes, producing light with colors ranging from yellow to red to burgundy. I made this final photograph of the evening as the tempo of the work slowed in luminous twilight, and this light combined with the natural color of the sandstone to produce intense and saturated colors on the sinuous shapes of the rock. A moment later we all realized that it had become quite dark, that we had not brought headlamps, and that we had to negotiate some tricky terrain in order to get back to where we started!

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

Mt. Conness, Dusk

October 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light falls across Mt. Conness and northern Yosemite wilderness

This ridge holds an astonishing range of photographic subjects, ranging from the smallest (tiny trees growing through cracks in the rock) through the intimate landscapes of trees and boulders and culminating in some grand vistas of distant ridges and peaks. For several days, even though there were other nearby subjects calling out to me, I returned repeatedly to this area, whose size cannot be more than a few acres.

I climbed up to photograph on this ridge one final time on our last night at this location. At first I went back to take care of some unfinished business — photographing subjects that I had seen but not shot on previous evenings, looking for a few in evening light that I had noticed at other times of the day, and working to perfect and distill images of certain subjects that I had photographed earlier. I finished most of that work as the sun set and the light began to go, and I started back across the ridge toward camp. As I crossed the ridge I caught a view of distant Mount Conness — named after the senator whose bill created Yosemite as a national park in the 1800s — in the glow of post-sunset dusk light that was still illuminating the foreground forest and granite.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: dusk

Geese, Tree, Dusk

New York Sidewalk, Evening

Potholes, Dusk

Mt. Conness, Dusk

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.