Tag Archives: green

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

Corn Lily Leaves, Autumn

October 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Corn lily plants take on autumn colors in the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park.

The corn lily plants are among my favorite markers of the passage of the short high Sierra summer season. When the high country first opens and water is everywhere, the first shoots look almost like unhusked ears of corn as they come up in wet areas. (I don’t think this is where the plant gets its name – more on that in a moment.) They quickly grow to several feet tall, clustered in thick bunches, as the mosquito season arrives – and at this time they are incredibly lush and green. At this time they are also a favorite subject for photographers. A few seem to sprout much taller than others and produce clusters of white flowers. Then as August wears on and the soil begins to dry the plants also begin to lose their lush quality and brown areas appear and perhaps some spots and holes appear in the leaves. Often by the end of the month I can find some that are starting to turn one of several shades: golden-yellow, tan, or very dark brown verging on black. By mid September few healthy looking plants remain and the stalks (which look very much like corn stalks) begin to fall over to the ground.

It hardly matters where this particular group of corn lily plants was growing, so I’ll just say that they were within a few minutes of our camp site. I can hardly ever pass up the opportunity to try to photograph this plant, no matter which stage of its life it is currently going through. These had fallen over and were rapidly losing what remained of their green color.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Fire Escape Ladder, Brick Building

September 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

On the final morning of our August (2011) visit to New York City, we took the subway down toward the lower end of the island to meet our son – the plan being to walk though Soho and (I think) the West Village, ending up at a gallery in Chelsea. After taking care of the most pressing bit of initial business – coffee – we wandered on through Soho… and I think this photograph was made there.

New Yorkers undoubtedly know exactly is going on with this light, but for the rest of the world… the morning sun was passing through a relatively narrow gap between buildings to strike this brick wall and partially pick off this green emergency exit zigzagging down the front of this building. In a lot of ways, this isn’t totally different from shooting natural landscapes – go out early, look for interesting subjects, find good light, make photographs. It isn’t totally the same – duh! – either. Not only can you walk here from coffee, but we (my son and I) shot without tripods, and I stuck to a single 50mm prime to keep things simple.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

“Shaftway” Loading Dock Doors, Chelsea

August 31, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Loading dock doors of a brick industrial building in Chelsea, New York City.

I made this photograph on my last morning in New York City in late August, when we visited a side street with many galleries in Chelsea. This is in an area, as I understand it, that has been shifting from more or less industrial to galleries and other more “trendy” endeavors now that the High Line park has, along with other developments, made the area more attractive.

As we walked out of (or was it into?) a doorway across the street, the “SHAFTWAY” sign on the green door caught my attention. As I look at the photograph more now I see a number of other things in it that intrigue me that I wasn’t fully aware of when I made the exposure.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Lupine and Fog

August 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring lupine blossoms grow on fog-shrouded slopes of Mission Peak above Fremont, California.

While doing a major review of the past half-dozen years of raw files this week I have come across quite a few photographs that I had more or less forgotten. (I’ve also deleted a lot of old raw files, but that is a different story.) While I had forgotten this photograph, I remember the day I took it quite well and the memory of the photograph came back as soon as I found it.

Mission Peak is more than 2000′ feet above the Mission San Jose (part of Fremont) area of the San Francisco Bay Area, in the East Bay a bit north of San Jose. The peak is a very popular hiking location due to its proximity to urban areas, its quick access to near-wilderness, and the fact the summit provides a spectacular view of the southern parts of the San Francisco Bay, ranging from the South Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains all the way up to San Francisco and, on clear days, beyond. On this day it was not clear, at least not at the start of the hike – it was extremely foggy, quite wet, and rather cold. But anyone who photographs flowers much knows that soft and diffused light can be your friend, and this fog certainly provided that light. The fog-obscured hills beyond are covered in the intense green (what I call the “impossible green”) of the California grasslands in spring.

By the way, I recall that as I continued on up the trail past these flowers and approached the summit of the peak I emerged above the fog bank to find hillsides carpeted with more lupine and with California golden poppy flowers.

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