Tag Archives: light

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Walking Man, Blue Building

July 23, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A man walks into the sun in front of a blue building, San Francisco, California

This building is, indeed, very blue. I passed it in the low angle morning light shortly after getting off the Caltrain and starting to walk up into the City. The area along Fourth Street seems to change each time I visit and the balance between very funky old businesses and so forth versus newer and slightly hipper stuff continues to shift toward the latter. I’m not sure what this building is, but I’m pretty certain that it is no longer some sort of garage or mechanical shop.

The first thing that caught my attention about this building was, no surprise, the blue color. I thought about how I could arrange the components of the shot to include only blue and white elements, but given the lens I was working with and a few other factors, that wasn’t possible – so there is a bit of brick wall at the upper right intruding into the blue sky. I’m starting to like it. Two other things that I saw here were the angled shadow and the trash collection bins. The two of them and the square shadow on the roll-up door seem to create a sort of pattern, and the walking person – also in a dark jacket and with a shadow, seems to bisect the space between the far right shadow and the middle bin. Without the figure, the shot didn’t seem all that interesting to me, so I employed a technique I often use when shooting urban subjects like this: compose and wait for something/someone to walk into the frame.

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

Sierra Lupine, Spring

July 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A dense patch of Sierra Nevada lupine, backlit by spring morning sun.

In spring the lupine flowers can bloom profusely in open areas in the Sierra foothills. We passed this small field of lupines along a roadside on the way to Yosemite Valley – and the stop probably made us late for a bit of wonderful early morning light in the Valley. But sometimes it is more important to photograph what you see here and now than to race past on the way to what you might find later. (That bit of advice is not worth as much as it might seem since sometimes precisely the opposite ends up being the right choice!)

These flowers were growing in a burned area, so there was plenty of sunlight to encourage their strong growth and large lupine plants grew thickly here. Them morning light was still low enough – and somewhat muted by a bit of high cloudiness, if I recall correctly, so that I could get down low and shoot with the flowers backlit. In order to make some sense out of the confusion of colorful flowers and plants, I decided to use a longer focal length lens and a relatively large aperture so that I could isolate the foreground flowers against the blurred background of plants that were farther away.

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

Wildfire Survivors, Morning

July 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on tall trees spared by a wildfire, Yosemite National Park

This is a sort of sad but hopeful portion of Yosemite. This valley, along the Tioga Pass Road, was badly burned back in the 1990s in a fire that burned upslope from the Foresta area and through old forest than had not burned in a long time. Back in the days of fire suppression, during the decades without fire a lot of undergrowth grew up and many fallen trees and other sorts of flammable debris collected. The result of Smokey Bear’s call to “prevent forest fires” was the creation of a very fuel rich forest environment and produced super-fires that were so hot that they not only consumed undergrowth but killed mature trees. This fire was one of those, and the forest in this valley near the upper reaches of the fire, just before it was halted at Tioga Pass Road, was almost completely decimated.

At first I found the sight to be depressing. Gradually I have come to regard fire as a normal part of forest ecology and can now see some stark beauty in its aftermath. However, this valley has remained a scar and a blunt reminder of why managing natural fires, along with other measures, makes for a better strategy. After a few years I began to think that there might be a photograph in this valley, though I stopped for several years without seeing anything that would work. I began to think that it might be good to try to photograph late in the day when area is open to the evening sky in the west – but I stopped a number of times and it just wasn’t right. However, on this trip I passed by early in the morning, just as the sun was topping a ridge to the east (left) and lighting up this small group of older trees that survived the original fire and now form a little outpost of forest against the desolate face of the far hillside.

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

Female Redwing Blackbirds

July 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Three female redwing blackbirds among the reeds near a San Joaquin Valley pond.

Among the relatively small number of birds that I actually can identify with some certainty are the red wing blackbirds… or so I thought. (To repeat my frequent disclaimer, I’m no expert on identifying birds, despite the fact that I frequently photograph them.) I have long been intrigued by these small birds, which I’ve photographed in large flocks and as individuals. The flocks are fun to watch and shoot for many reasons, but one is that as the birds turn and angle across the landscape many of them may reveal the namesake red areas on their wings for brief instants.

I remember making this photograph and being intrigued by the small birds hanging out in the reeds of this pond where I had gone to photograph other larger and more impressive migratory birds, including geese, cranes, and more. The soft light on the birds caught my attention – fog was thinning but still muting the light – as did the warm golden and brown colors of the vegetation and the out of focus background of small trees. At the time I really did not know what kind of birds these were, but I figured that I could look them up later. I did so somewhat later when I had time to work on the photographs from this shoot. I tried to match them with various different sort of common small birds but nothing quite fit. I finally asked some folks if they knew and one online friend quickly got back to me to say that they were female redwing blackbirds… which don’t have red wings and are not black! (He was sympathetic and suggested that others had been confused by these birds, too. Thanks, Chuq!)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: light

Walking Man, Blue Building

Sierra Lupine, Spring

Wildfire Survivors, Morning

Female Redwing Blackbirds

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.