Tag Archives: lush

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwood Trail, Spring Morning

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Redwood Trail, Spring Morning
Lush spring vegetation along a trail through coastal redwood forest, Northern California.

Redwood Trail, Spring Morning. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Lush spring vegetation along a trail through coastal redwood forest, Northern California.

Early one June morning this year we parked the car and strolled along a trail into a coast redwood grove that is close enough to the Pacific that you pass people hiking to the water and you encounter fog forming over the coast hills. Not all redwood forests are this moist, but here the conditions create especially lush growth, and on this morning the drifting fog softened the light and muted more distant subjects, though it still had a bit of a directional quality.

On this visit I thought a lot about the difference between what the camera records and what the eye and mind see in the redwoods. When opening files from photography in the redwoods, the colors often seem more dull than the memory. Several possible explanations exist, but I’ve long had an idea about how our visual system accommodates different kinds of lighting, essentially normalizing them in ways that aren’t captured by the camera. This time I made a point of stopping and thinking long and hard about the way the colors looked to me while walking through the forest, and I realized that our visual system’s normalization process compensates for the bluish light and tells us that the colors are warmer than they objectively are. To my mind, it is more important that a photograph express what I saw in the place than it is that it achieve some standard of objective color balance that essentially lies about what I experienced… and what you see here is true to my experience in the redwoods.

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, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Redwood National & State Parks

Redwood Grove, Humboldt Redwoods

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Redwood Grove, Humboldt Redwoods
A dense grove of old- and new-growh coast redwoods, Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

Redwood Grove, Humboldt Redwoods. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dense grove of old- and new-growh coast redwoods, Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

When photographing new locations, there is a tension between knowing enough and knowing too much ahead of time. In most cases, some preparatory research about a place is useful — it lets you find your way to (and back from!) interesting locations, and it alerts you to their existence. On the other hand, knowing too much about a place limits opportunities to experience the feeling of “discovering” something unexpected. When we arrived at this grove near the end of an exploratory loop to the far Northern California coast, the unexpected stillness and quiet of this magnificent grove was magical.

Another tension concerns the best way(s) to interpret coast redwood forests in photographs. For me, the path usually lies somewhere between the (hopeless and uninteresting) idea of “capturing” supposed objective reality and fascinating and extravagantly subjective and even fantastical interpretations that may be problematic. I don’t think that there is a right answer, but extreme cases raise important questions. On this visit I focused on carefully considering what I see without the camera — how cool/warm the light appears in these places, how much detail can I really see, how much light is really in the scene. These observations inform how I render these subjects — and my thinking about the boundaries between what was there, how the camera “saw” it, and how I want you to see it.

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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Commentary

Leaves in Rain

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Leaves in Rain
Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Leaves in Rain. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Californians have been dealing with strange weather patterns for more than a decade now — a five-year drought, a few years of way above average rainfall, and then the current season that has been almost completely rainless up until now. As I write this the pendulum is apparently about the swing the other direction, and the forecasts for my part of the state predict an “atmospheric river” storm later this week that has the potential to bring absurd amounts of rain over the course of a few days. It seems to be feast or famine, though the amount of recent rain famine has been the biggest concern.

While this photograph is evocative of the weather we’re about to have, it comes from a naturally wetter place a few hundred miles to the north, namely Portland, Oregon. On a spring visit a few years back we ended up in one of that cities urban parks on a cloudy and wet day, and as we wandered though gardens I stopped to photograph these leaves.

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, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Waterfall and Pond

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Waterfall and Pond
A waterfall empties into a small pool, Portland Japanese Garden.

Waterfall and Pond. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A waterfall empties into a small pool, Portland Japanese Garden.

This is a portrait-orientation photograph of the same subject I recently posted in landscape orientation — a beautiful and quite peaceful scene from the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon.

With some subjects I go ahead and photograph both waits — vertical and horizontal — for several reasons. My first impressions of a subject while I’m on the scene don’t always turn out to be the rest ones, and sometimes I discover later on that a compositional option I had dismissed actually works well. So I recognize that it is possible that a scene that seems to work in landscape mode may turn out to work in portrait mode. On top of that, and thinking in practical terms, sometimes a particular usage of a photograph demands one or the other orientation, and I’d like to be able to offer both options. In this case, the vertical orientation may emphasize the verticality of the waterfall a bit more than the alternative view.

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 and Amazon.

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.