Evening cloud forms above the Pacific Ocean coastline near Davenport, California.
This is the first of a pair of abstract images of evening clouds that I photographed earlier this week along the California coastline north of Davenport.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Convoluted folds topped by some stratified material at Zabraskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California.
A new hobby for me when photographing Zabriskie Point is to forego the famous panoramic views of Manley Beacon and the Panamints – well, at least sometimes – and to instead focus on smaller details of the patterns in the fantastically folded terrain. Starting about a year ago, I also became intrigued by the idea of shooting here at unusual times of the day: late morning, early afternoon, and so forth. I started doing this when a year ago I shot somewhere else at dawn and then happened to stop her much later in the morning – only to discover that some of the shapes and forms that are in shadow early in the day are actually better-lit later on.
On my late-March trip I did shoot Zabriskie at the “popular” time of dawn on one morning, but on another day I spent a good amount of time shooting here during the less classically ideal time in the middle of the afternoon. I was lucky enough to get just a bit of high thing clouds which reduced contrast just a bit, but kept the interesting shadows and illuminated ridges that appear at this time of day. When I shoot this way I go straight for a very long lens and focus on smaller details of the scene, ignoring the larger and broader landscape in favor of bits of a gully, shadowed or sunlit ridges, or a bit of strata material sitting on top of the folded material as seen here.
Rather than amp up the contrast and saturation – an easy trap to fall for in the afternoon light – I decided to keep the softer and less saturated effect that I was actually there when I made the photographs.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM at 250mm
ISO 100, f/16, 1/30 second
keywords: zabriskie, point, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, nature, landscape, geology, scenic, travel, form, formations, fold, gully, rock, strata, material, shadow, light, abstract, view, ridge, hill, manifold, overlook, desert, barren, stock
Black and white photograph of a sunlit wall with textured glass windows along a street in San Francisco, California.
Yet another of the “it is sort of street photography and sort of urban landscape” photographs, this one made on a walking loop that took me through a good part of downtown San Francisco, and finally through the Tenderloin to the Civic Center. I made several photographs of the obscure glass windows of this street-level window along the sidewalk. In this one I wanted to work with the converging lines of the window frame and the vertical lines of the bits of wall between the windows.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
A very old and dilapidated garage with hand-painted sign along Virgil Street in the Mission District, San Francisco, California.
Believe it or not, this is street photography.
I know it looks more like scene from an old farm perhaps, featuring the worn doors of the barn or a storage shed. We can imagine that it sits along a pasture or near the farmhouse, and the bit of green might suggest unseen springtime growth nearby. But it was actually photographed in a narrow and very urban alley in San Francisco’s dense and busy Mission District. It was shot “street style” with a handheld camera equipped with only a 50mm prime as I wandered around on foot.
I had seen this garage and pair of doors many times before, and I had thought about photographing them. However the scene never quite seemed to work as a photograph. But on this day two things came together and provoked me to make a few images. First, the light was very interesting. It was a cloudy day, but occasionally the clouds would thin or almost part enough to let in brighter but still diffused light – and that is the light that I used to make this exposure. Second, the little bit of new plant growth (OK, it is a weed) lends a bit of color contrast and life to the scene.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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