Tag Archives: foliage

Leaves in Shadows

Image July 9, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Lush leaves in the shadows of a San Francisco Peninsula garden.

In early June we visited our favorite San Francisco Peninsula garden. We usually go early in the morning, but this time we went late in the day — there was a special event featuring music, drinks, and food, along with the opportunity to sit under oak trees or on the lawn and watch the evening light arrive. As appealing as all of that was, we still DID bring cameras.

Before the light decreased too much, we managed to do a quick circuit of some of the more interesting parts of the garden, mostly looking for flowers. But we also stopped in a dark little grove where most of the flowers were spent, and here I photographed this lush growth beneath the trees.

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: Macro, Photographs: Nature

Foxglove Buds

Image June 29, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Foxglove buds about to bloom.

We visited this garden in late May to photograph spring flowers. Lots of things were in bloom, particularly roses and foxglove. The foxglove blooms intrigued me, and I began by trying to photograph individual blooms and the dense collections of flowers. Eventually I noticed that a few of the plants had not entirely blossomed yet, and I became intrigued by the groups of buds at the tops of the plants.

There’s an interesting and useful photographic fact demonstrated by this photograph. One way to highlight a subject is to place it in sharp focus against an out-of-focus, diffused background. The usual advice — which has some validity — is to use an extremely large aperture to make the background soft. But if you are close enough to the subject and the background is far enough away, you can also get a nice background blur with smaller apertures, too… as I did here. (Note, too, that color and luminosity differences between subject and background can also help it stand out.)

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

Spring Fern

Image June 23, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A spring fern grows in the shade among boulders along the base of Yosemite Valley cliffs.

You might think that the toughest challenges on my one-day up-and-back trips to the Sierra — on one of which I made this photograph — would be getting up hours before sunrise and driving for hours, or perhaps it would be the long return drive with a midnight or later arrival. The truth? It is the midday hours. Photographically, this can be tough time of day. There are opportunities, but you have to look for them. And by late morning and early afternoon I’m simply tired from that early wake-up call… and ready for a good, long nap!

On this trip to Yosemite Valley, the pattern held. I arrived very early, photographed through the morning, following light and shadow around the Valley. At noon I grabbed a bite to eat and then… took a very long nap in my car. But the beautiful evening light was hours away on this long, late-spring day, so when I woke up I loaded my pack and set out to see what I could find in the midday light. I headed to an area along the base of the cliffs where I thought I might find some interesting rocks, trees, and soft shade light. And that’s where I photographed this sprouting fern, aglow in reflected light against a backdrop of forest litter and a boulder.

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Photographs: Nature

Overlapping Leaves

Image June 18, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bright spring leaves overlap in the spring gardens of the Filoli Center.

Whether I find myself on a redwood trail or at a formal garden, I can never resist photographing the leaves of plants. They are among the subjects that supply a virtual infinity of shapes and colors and arrangements to work with — which still somehow surprises me. Are they thick or thin? Long or short? Dark or light? Smooth or veined? Back-lit or top-lit? Direct light or filtered? The expected green or any of a rainbow of other possibilities?

I found this plant (or, more correctly, these plants) tucked away in a corner at a large San Francisco Peninsula garden that we visited in late May. The growth was thick and the shadowed light was soft, which revealed a lot of texture and shape — of individual leaves and of the composite forms created by their overlapping arrangement.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: foliage

Leaves in Shadows

Foxglove Buds

Spring Fern

Overlapping Leaves

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