Tag Archives: line

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

Windows and Reflected Light, Industrial Building

October 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A double-reflection of late light from an adjacent building appears in the upper story of this window-covered industrial building near the High Line Park in New York City.

This is another of my photographs from New York City’s High Line Park, made during my late August visit to the city earlier this year. For those who may not know, the High Line is a relatively new (and still under construction) urban park in Chelsea that is “elevated,” being built on the bed of the old elevated railway that passed through here. The park is tremendously popular, especially on summer evenings.

Aside from being a pleasant place to walk, the High Line affords some interesting views that are usually not quite this accessible. There are not to many places where you can walk through a busy urban environment such as Manhattan for a mile or so, out in the open, a couple of stories above street level, with largely unobstructed views of subjects near and far, and above and below. Here the park passes between some taller buildings that are closely spaced, creating an interesting lighting situation. (Oddly, it is a kind of lighting that I often look for when shooting landscape or nature subjects.) The sun is behind the building in the photograph, so the building is largely lit by light from the open sky plus light reflected from the building behind my camera position. You can see that other building in the windows here, the upper floors in direct sun light and the lower in shadow.

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

Sunset, Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon

October 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon storm clouds clear from the sunset sky above Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon, Yosemite National Park.

With this photograph I get to tell another of the “serendipitous photograph” stories that seem to keep coming up in my work. In this case, we had been camped near the lake in the lower area of the photograph for several days, getting to know the place and having time to carefully photograph various areas nearby. On a previous evening we had climbed to a second lake a few hundred feet higher than the “main” lake, from which one of our group decided to traverse a nearby slope. He ended up at another alpine lake that looked interesting, and the next morning others went with him to visit it. I didn’t, because I had some other things that I wanted to photograph in morning light and because I had a hunch that the light might turn out to be more interesting in the evening, mainly because the area of the lake was open to the west and, therefore, the evening light.

So in the evening, after our typical very early dinner, I departed on a walk to the upper lake that my friends had visited that morning, wandering around “our” lake and through the surrounding forest to pick up a rocky ramp that ascended toward the lake. However, I apparently missed a turn somewhere. I finished the main part of the climb and apparently should have turned left immediately – but I continued on straight ahead and soon found myself in a little meadowy area with a rather steep bunch of rocks between me and my goal. I finally found a circuitous route up a series of ramps, but now it was getting too close to sunset and my turn-around time, so I had to retrace my steps without getting to the lake.

I returned to the small meadow and made a few photographs there, then headed back toward the route by which I had ascended. Despite not making the lake, one of my main goals had been to get up high to photograph the surrounding terrain at sunset, especially since earlier in the day large thunderclouds had been building to the east and creating the possibility of some very special evening light. As I descended the upper part of the “ramp,” the pre-sunset colors started to light up and I quickly found a spot with a good vantage point to view this in several directions. Among the last photographs I made as the light started to fade was the series including this image. (It is actually a composite of two exposures – one for the very bright and saturated clouds and another for the darker shadows down near that lake.) Beyond the lake is the left end of rocky Shepherds Crest and even further in the distance is Virginia Canyon and then the Sierra crest.

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

Reflections, Trees and Rocks, Morning Light

October 2, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on shoreline trees and rocks at a back-country sub-alpine lake, Yosemite National Park.

I had the chance to shoot around this lake on three successive mornings. The first morning was, to some extent, more about wandering around and getting the feel of the place – though I did make photographs, too. But on the second and third mornings I had figured out what and when I wanted to photograph and I was able to more or less get right to work. Up before dawn, I walked to the far shore before the sun rose, where there was still frost on the shoreline meadows and I could shoot in the soft, early light. Soon, as the sun rose above the ridge to our east, the sun light began to make its way down to the lake, first hitting the tops of trees along the west shore, then lighting the shoreline itself, and eventually moving up the lake and lighting up trees, water, rocky islands, shoreline boulders, and the forest.

In situations like this there are several specific things that I look for and like to shoot. I love to photograph the backlit trees, pointing my camera almost directly toward the sun. The trees light up and their colors intensify. I also watch for forested slopes that climb to the east, like the one on the far side of the lake in this photograph. As the sun rises higher, the slanting beams of light begin to pick off the tops of the forest trees, and can still leave a darker background for those other backlit trees. Of course, such shooting does present a few challenges. Obviously, shooting straight into the light creates some serious flare issues, and I improvise all sorts of interesting ways to shield the lens from direct light: my hat, hands and arms held in the air, you name it. When shooting over the water it can be even trickier since you have “two suns” producing flare – the real sun in the sky, and the very intense reflected sun coming up from the water. Bugs can also be a problem! Just like the trees, shoreline mosquitos and flies also pick up that wonderful backlight… and when they are thick enough they can create little blurry stripes all over the frame. (This leads to loads of oh-so-fun work with the clone tool in post!)

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

Ediza Lake, Morning

September 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Broken clouds cover the sky as morning light comes to Ediza Lake and surrounding peaks, Sierra Nevada.

This is a photograph from about four years ago, when I made a several-day trip into the area around the Minarets and travelled slowly between Ediza Lake and Thousand Island Lake. I was on the trail with my brother’s family, so we took it fairly easy and stayed at Ediza and then Thousand Island for several days. This provide plenty of time for photography, unlike some of my “traditional” trips on which I tended to move every day.

We had “interesting” weather on this trip, in all senses of the word “interesting.” In fact, the conditions really were quite good for photography, ranging from perfectly clear dawns to afternoon thunder showers and everything in between. On one memorable late morning I had hiked up from Ediza to the some higher lakes closer to the Minarets. When I left it was perfectly clear, but by the time I arrived at my destination (or perhaps my new, closer destination once I saw the weather) it became clear that it wasn’t going to remain clear for long. Being a bit too trusting of the earlier clear weather, I had gone out with no rain gear, and by the time I got close to camp very large rain drops were starting to fall.

This photograph was made in the morning from the shoreline of Ediza Lake. It looks back over the lake toward Mount Ritter and Banner Peak, whose two large summits dominate this whole area.

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