Tag Archives: green nature

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New England

New England Woods #2

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New England Woods #2
Dense hardwood forest along a Vermont roadway.

New England Woods #2. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Dense hardwood forest along a Vermont roadway.

We spent most of the last two weeks of August on the East Coast of the United States, first in New York City and then with the extended family at a lodge in southwestern Vermont. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that my East Coast experience has been almost entirely limited to Florida and New York — plus, of course, the inevitable trips between Manhattan and the Newark-Liberty Airport. Friends have told me that I must see New England, especially in autumn, and I’ve always thought it sounded interesting… but I had just never made it there before. Part of this, of course, is due to my landscape “regionalism,” otherwise known as my love of the lands of the America West.

I can’t say that I’ve quite “gotten” the New England landscape after one week spent there, but I most certainly can say that I’m intrigued and want to go back. For this near-native Californian, whose summer “normal” is golden-brown dryness, the lush and dense greenery of Vermont was a revelation. I understand they are having a drought there, but if that is what qualifies for drought in New England, count me in. (I know that this is a serious matter, but you get my drift, right?) I made this photograph on a walk up a gravel road from the lodge where we spent the week.

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: Nature

Leaf Edges

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Leaf Edges
Leaf edges with thorns in the shape of small waves.

Leaf Edges. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Leaf edges with thorns in the shape of small waves.

Few of us seem to be able to resist photographing thick leaves like these, particularly when they overlap in such graphically interesting ways, presenting a contrast between dark shadows and the bright spines on the edges of the leaves. I know I can’t resist, and almost any time I find myself in a garden I end up pointing the camera at such things, even when photography is not my primary reason for visiting.

My first instinct with a subject like this one is frequently to go straight to monochrome. I’m not sure if that is because I feel that removing color may focus attention on the graphical forms or simply because the earliest photographs in this genre that I saw were monochromatic. Here I went the opposite direction, keeping and even amping up the intensity of the colors a bit, warming the shadow light as well.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Two Oaks, Morning Sun

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Two Oaks, Morning Sun
Two Oaks, Morning Sun

Two Oaks, Morning Sun. Calero Hills, California. April 30, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The springtime morning sun shines through a pair of oak trees in the Calero Hills south of San Jose, California.

On the final day of April and for the first time this season, I found to go for a hike at my favorite local park, a place where I have walked just about every available trail (and invented a few routes of my own) and photographed for a number of years. The park would not seem like anything all that special by comparison to some of the other places I visit, but it is close and I’ve gotten to know it in a way that makes it more special. The place is called the Calero County Park, part of the Santa Clara County Parks system.

The entrance to the park is in a broad valley that is largely occupied by stables. (Or, used to be – it looks like the stables must have closed since last season.) Rising from this valley are the typical grass-covered hills of central and northern California, with oaks and other trees scattered around and, in places, thicker trees and brush. At this time of year, the hills turn what I call “impossibly green” – and if you have seen them on a late-winter or early spring morning you know what I mean.

I started this hike a bit after dawn, so the golden hour light was more or less gone. I had a general idea of photographing some wildflowers (which didn’t happen – it was too windy) and some oak trees that grow alone or in small groups on the grass-covered hills. I passed a small lake – where a single egret often hangs out, but not on this morning – and topped a rise and descended into a small valley from which I have made quite a few photographs of oaks. It didn’t look too promising at first, but at the far end of this area I noticed that a pair of trees were still obscuring the sun and that I might be able to shoot straight into the sun with the trees blocking its disk, and get a photograph including the tree shadows on the hillside grasses.

This turned out to be another of those all-too-common ephemeral photographs in that the sun was starting to rise above the top branches of the tree and would soon be “out in the open,” making it much too bright for what I had in mind. So I worked quickly to set up tripod and camera and select a lens, then frame a composition, focus, and make a series of exposures that might be needed to deal with the huge dynamic range between direct sun and backlit tree trunks. By the time I had everything set up and was ready to shoot the sun had already risen above the upper branches, so I ended up looking for a slightly better shadow and putting the tripod down very low – and this gave me must enough time to make the series of exposures I figured I would need.

In the end, I got lucky. One single shot somehow managed to not blow the sun out too badly yet hold enough detail in the grass that a bit of work in post could bring it back. With all of the potential for lens flare – which I had to some extent in every shot – this one only had two small bits of it, and they were easily dealt with.

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