The Pena Palace sits on the top of a ridge above Sintra, Portugal, a short train ride from Lisbon. (You do have to get to the ridge from the train station, perhaps a story for another time.) It is a remarkable structure that appears like something from a fantasy, especially in the foggy and rainy conditions while we were there. The palace and its turrets and towers are painted in brilliant colors.
Continue reading Detail, Pena Palace
Taking a cue from the music-related title of this photograph, I suspect you may have noticed that my photographs cover a wide range of subjects. When people ask me “what I photograph,” probably expecting a short answer like “landscapes” or “portraits” or “street,” there can be an awkward moment while I consider how to answer. I don’t photograph just one thing… any more than a composer would choose to write only, say, minuets. There is more than one thing to express, so more than one approach is necessary. If anything, my photographs are about… how I see the world photographically.
I won’t try to explain the entire “consonance and dissonance” connection here, except to point out that these terms have multiple meanings. One basic idea is that something is consonant in music if it “sounds nice” and “dissonant” if it doesn’t. But a more interesting idea relates to something that seems static and “settled” (consonance) versus something that seems restless and striving (dissonance). Taken one step further, the tension created by dissonance often propels us toward consonance… and consonance can resolve that tension.
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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
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People Standing By Window. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Two people stand against a dark wall next to a window, Museum of Modern Art.
This photograph comes from a Manhattan visit a few years back. We usually are there for at least a week each year — though we have not been back since before the start of the pandemic. We miss the place! We have some traditions when it comes to these visits. One is to indulge me in a lot of “museum time.” (The amount of time I’m willing to spend in such places occasionally makes me the butt of family jokes.) We visited the Museum of Modern Art on this visit, and the photograph comes from there.
I’m often a bit surprised — though by how you’d think I would not be — by how interesting I find museums as photographic spaces. They are full of interesting and sometimes unusual architecture, and they are often designed to incorporate a lot of investing lighting, especially natural lighting. In many cases there is some sort of central atrium or similar that creates a tall, vertical open area… and that provides some wild and off-kilter angles of subjects that would look quite different if photographed on their own level. Here a pair of people stands at the base of a stairway, positioned in the angle between a nearly-black wall and a window.
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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Fern Vortex. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A spiraling arrangement of fern fronds in Northern California redwood forest.
We did not get back to the Redwood National and State Parks this past year — the time we would have gone coincided with that period when we were all locking down in response to the pandemic. In retrospect, it was perhaps starting to look like camping might have worked, but things were still in too much of a state of flux at that point. So this photograph comes from the previous season, back in June of 2019.
Late in the day we decided to head to a spot where I knew from experience the tit might be possible to find rhododendron blossoms growing among the redwood trees, a place where the normally dark forest tends to pick up a bit more light from the west in the late afternoon. We wandered a trail and eventually descended into an area full of ferns. Here I turned my attention away from the huge trees and looked downwards to find compositions among the ferns.
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.
Scroll down to leave a comment or question.
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.