Tag Archives: huntington

Ginkgo Leaves, Stones

Ginko Leaves, Stones
Ginkgo Leaves, Stones

Ginkgo Leaves, Stones. Southern California. November 28, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Autumn ginkgo leaves among stones

My friend — and excellent photographer — David Hoffman occasionally takes things to extremes. Recently there has been a Facebook meme that has photographers challenging another to post five days of black and white photographs. Dave managed to stretch his “five” photographs out to about a dozen, if memory serves. As sometimes happens with these “challenges,” he received at least one more duplicate challenge after finishing his five-becomes-12 postings. Not shirking from the challenge, he accepted and then went on to start posting new black and white every day until Christmas! I’m not sure I’m going to do that, but I thought that I’d keep the black and white theme going for a while.

This is a photograph of what was a very colorful subject — very yellow fallen autumn ginkgo tree leaves resting among stones in the blue light of shade. I could present a color rendition of that subject, but It seemed like black and white work, too — even though the idea of giving up the fall color for monochrome is a bit counterintuitive. Because the location of the photograph and, frankly, the circumstances of taking it are so unremarkable, I’m not going to tell that story. Yet.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Ivy #1

Ivy #1
Ivy #1

Ivy #1 (After Huntington Witherill). August 7, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Ivy leaves, after Huntington Witherill.

With apologies to and inspired by Huntington Witherill, whose beautiful Photo Synthesis exhibit I saw this past weekend at the Center for Photographic Arts in Carmel, this image is the result of something I played around with yesterday.

I was not previously familiar with Witherill’s photography, neither his “classic” and very beautiful black and white work, nor the more experimental digital work of the Photo Synthesis series. It is all very compelling and tremendously varied work. The exhibit features the digital “manipulations” of flower and other plant subjects. I was fortunate to be able to attend his lecture at the opening of the show, and quite a few things struck me – more than I have time to describe here. As (yet another) photographer with a background in music, I relate to his description of a working process for the Photo Synthesis images that is, in some ways, like jazz improvisation – so I took that route with this image, which I’ll simply describe as an experiment for now. It was also fascinating to watch his animations of the sequence of steps that his source images underwent as they progressed to become the final images. I also like the way he embraces the concept of what I think of as “photographic art” without getting too hung up about whether the result is a photograph or something else. I also was intrigued by (hoping I say this in a way that makes sense and doesn’t accidentally sound offensive) the fact that he is so close to some sort of “edge” with these images that some are incredibly beautiful while a few push a boundary that I’m not quite ready to cross.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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