Tag Archives: green

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Badlands, Morning Light

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Badlands, Morning Light
Soft morning sunlight on colorful badlands terrain, Death Valley National Park.

Badlands, Morning Light. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Soft morning sunlight on colorful badlands terrain, Death Valley National Park.

This area of Death Valley attracts me on almost every visit to this desert landscape. Unlike many of the places I like to visit in the park, it isn’t in the “back of beyond,” and I often photograph here on a morning when I don’t want to travel too far, for example on the final morning of a visit. Like many badlands locations, this area provides an astonishing wealth of potential photographic subjects, and their appearance changes with the light.

In keeping with the usual practice, we visited early one morning on this trip, arriving in the area before sunrise so that we would be ready for the arrival of the first light. This morning sun can be intense, but a bit of high cloudiness softened the light a bit, and this made the colors a bit more visible.

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

Stems

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Stems
Stems of new bulbs crowd together.

Stems. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Stems of new bulbs crowd together.

It isn’t unusual for someone to ask about one of my photographs, “Have you thought about how it would look in black and white?” Why, yes, I almost certainly have! When I began “doing photography” quite a few decades ago, I started with black and white film and printing, and almost all of the photographers I admired were those doing black and white work. Sometimes I know at the time of exposure that a photograph will be black and white. (Though I prefer today’s technology that allows me to capture for color image data for use in the post-processing conversion to monochrome.) Sometimes I’m positive that a photograph will end up as a color image. And sometimes, to be honest, I’m not certain.

This photograph falls into the latter category. Sort of. But not exactly. The thing that drew me to the subject originally was the pattern of very green plants. In fact, a while ago I shared a version of this photograph that is very much a color image. But yet… I felt that it would also work in black and white, and that in some ways the “abstract” nature of patterns of lines and contrasts between light and dark might even work better in some ways using a monochrome rendition.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature

Hidden Leaves

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Hidden Leaves
Leaves on the ground under the plants in a formal garden.

Hidden Leaves. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Leaves on the ground under the plants in a formal garden.

In a discussion about “what to photograph,” I once heard a photographer simply say, “There’s always SOMETHING to see!” You can always find something worthy of a photograph almost anywhere if you look closely enough and open your eyes to what is around you. Often the potential subject is not the thing that you were looking for.

That was certainly the case with this photograph. We had gone to a beautiful garden where the first signs of coming spring were evident—flowers starting to bloom and green things growing. I did photograph some of those subjects, but I was also a bit restless. I started looking around at the other things at this place, and once I did I started to see potential subjects. In one shady section of the garden there were camellias and other larger plants, and beneath these plants the ground was covered with fallen leaves, presenting an intimate landscape that looked more like autumn than the arrival of spring.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

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

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature

Morning Green

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Morning Green
Garden plants after morning watering.

Morning Green. © Copyright 2022.G Dan Mitchell.

Garden plants after morning watering.

After focusing on a rather dry sort of landscape for much of the past month, recently I have had a couple of chances to photograph much more colorful and lush subjects here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Due to the seasonal change — yes, spring is on its way — and the effects of another drier-than-usual winter, plants are sprouting and even blossoming here.

We have made a couple of trips to a large local garden that is open to the public, usually going on a less-busy weekday morning and trying to arrive as soon as the place opens. It seems to me that on these weekday mornings there is a lot of garden work taking place — watering, trimming, pruning, planting, and cleaning up. Quite a few of the photographs I have made have involved the detritus of these activities: old leaves and blooms on the ground, flowers a bit past their peak, and in this case some plants that had been watered moments before I arrived.

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.

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. (Click this post’s title first if you are viewing on the home page.)

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.