Tag Archives: el

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Chicago L Train

Leave a comment
Chicago L Train
Chicago L Train

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

A Chicago L train crosses a downtown bridge.

Since I’m not a Chicago regular, much less a Chicago native, I get to report the obvious here — these things are all new to a visitor who is still discovering the town. Actually, I was already familiar with the Chicago L, the city’s elevated railway system, from my previous short visits. The L trains, many of which have a bit of the same attractive worn and dated quality of the New York subway system cars, travel on elevated tracks above the downtown area. The car in this photograph is on a bridge crossing the Chicago River in the downtown area.

I don’t know the whole story, though I think it involves the historic paths of railroads into the downtown area, but there are areas in downtown Chicago with multiple street levels. For example, if you drop down to some sections of the Riverwalk from the main roadway level, you arrive at another system of roadways that runs underneath. Add the L on top of that, and there are three transpiration layers in places.

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

Horsetail Fall

Leave a comment
Horsetail Fall
Horsetail Fall

Horsetail Fall. Yosemite Valley, California. March 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Horsetail Fall in afternoon light, Yosemite Valley

As you may already know, Yosemite Valley’s Horsetail Fall draws visitors and especially photographers ever winter, roughly during the last half of February or so. During this period a miraculous conjunction of sunset light, a gap in the ridges to the west, and a wispy waterfall dropping over the edge of El Capitan may produce a momentary “natural firewall” for those positioned to the east of the waterfall. The sight is quite something… but in some ways it is almost more amazing to encounter hundreds of people who have traveled great distances to stand in cold or even snowy meadows to gaze upwards in hopes of seeing this ephemeral light.

I have photographed it in the past so I generally do not photograph it any more. In fact, I like to joke that one of the nice things about Horsetail Fall is that it clears the rest of the Valley of photographers in the evening! ;-) I must have confused at least a few people when I was there on the first day of March, at a time when people are still hoping to catch the phenomenon. We pulled into one of the two popular areas for viewing the fall, but in the late afternoon, well before the light was even hinting at what it could do later on. I looked up at the cliff high above and saw that recent rains had brought the fall to life, and that winds across the upper face of El Capitan were blowing the fall too and fro and carrying its wispy spray in all directions. The rock face was uniformly damp, and the late afternoon light was bright and silvery on the rock. I put a long lens on the camera and pointed it up toward this bright subject and made a few exposures as the wind whipped the falling water back and forth. Then I packed up and left… just as the evening throng of photographers was arriving and finding their positions to photograph what they hoped would be colorful sunset light.

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

Last Light on Snow, Fog, and Granite

Leave a comment
Last Light on Snow, Fog, and Granite
Last Light on Snow, Fog, and Granite

Last Light on Snow, Fog, and Granite. Yosemite National Park, California. March 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trees, fog, and snow on the granite summit of El Capitan glow in a final beam of sunset light.

Near the beginning of March I was in Yosemite Valley for three days in conjunction with the opening of the Yosemite Renaissance XXIX exhibit. (One of my photographs is in the show.) It was a wonderful weekend in many ways. Lots of artists of all sorts were there for the opening—and for Yosemite!—and I had the chance to get together with many friends among them. It was also a time of atmospheric conditions that were spectacular in ways that interest me as a photographer – broken light, occasional rain, mist and clouds.

On this evening we went to Tunnel View since it was mostly gray down in the Valley and because there was some promise of not only drifting clouds and mist there, but also of some late day light. All of those things happened, but as the end of the day approached, the “lights went out” as the clouds to the west thickened and blocked the setting sun. I continued to shoot for a while, mostly focusing a long lens on small distant details within the scene, but I finally decided that the light was simply becoming too flat and I walked back to the car to pack up, thinking about the friends I would soon join for dinner in the Valley. At the back of the car I removed the long lens, collapsed the tripod, and was packing everything away when Patty, who was sitting the front seat and facing the valley, exclaimed, “Look at that light!” Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much, but when I looked up I saw a blood red band of light stretching across the cliffs of El Capitan on the left and Sentinel Rocks on the right. Apparently the sun had found a narrow gap in the clouds almost exactly at the point it reached the horizon far to the west. I immediately knew that this light would be gone very quickly—at best it might last a minute or two—so I worked very quickly to set up the tripod, attach the camera, and stick a long lens on it… not even looking up at the view as I worked. No time to look! I quickly moved the camera to the nearest possible shooting location and, working almost entirely intuitively, quickly picked out perhaps four different shots, each focusing on the momentarily best bit of light as the scene evolved quickly. The final bit of light was a rapidly fading stripe just across the snow- and cloud-shrouded summit of El Capitan, where the upper rocks, snow, and trees picked up the intense red light for a matter of a few seconds, and then it was 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

Tall Trees, Meadow, Autumn

Leave a comment
Tall Trees, Meadow, Autumn
Tall Trees, Meadow, Autumn

Tall Trees, Meadow, Autumn. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tall trees grow in a row in a meadow backed by cottonwood and black oak trees with autumn foliage

I guess I just can’t help myself when it comes to photographing in this Yosemite Valley meadow area – or in similar areas, for that matter. As I’ve written before, during the time of the year when the days are shorter and the sun is lower, the light in some of these places is constantly changing – pre-sunrise and post-sunset soft “blue hour” light, early and late direct sun over the upper edges of cliffs, shadow right after dawn and before sunset and when cliffs interrupt the light during midday hours. Other changes take place on a longer cycle – the stark quality of winter, snow covering everything when winter storms arrive, morning fog, trees newly green in spring or yellow and gold in fall. And there are many more things to see than just the “landscape size” things – wildflowers, fallen leaves, frost, and more.

So, yes, I visited and revisited the meadows during this fall’s end-of-October visit to The Valley. While I often focus on the black oaks that grow in these meadows, here I decided to focus on evergreen trees. This group stands almost evenly spaced in a row. I struggled with how to deal with their height when shooting from a relatively close distance, and then realized that by not including the whole tree I could emphasize the vertical lines of their trunks and perhaps suggest the even higher parts of the trees that are not visible here.

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.