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Online Gallery Update

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My web presence has long included this blog and a separate online gallery housing a large archive of photographs — perhaps about 3000 of them at last count. Earlier this week the gallery had a technical issue that snowballed and eventually took that gallery completely offline.

During the past few days I have spent way to many hours trying to get the gallery working again, and I have (mostly) succeeded at this point. A new version of the gallery now holds essentially all of the photographs that were at the old gallery. The format is a bit different, though the underlying organization of the images is similar. At this point, the titles of photographs do not display correctly, and you’ll see file names where there used to be titles. This is fixable, but not right away.

If you tried to find the old gallery and couldn’t, thanks for your patience. If you haven’t seen the gallery, feel free to wander over there and take look!

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.

Morning Musings

Important Yosemite Anniversary (Morning Musings 10/1/14)

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G Dan and Richard Mitchell in Yosemite, date unknown
Richard Mitchell (left) and G Dan Mitchell (right) in Yosemite, date unknown

October 1, 2014 marks the 124 year anniversary of the creation of Yosemite National Park on this day in 1890. To quote from a park web page:

“In 1889, John Muir, America’s most famous and influential naturalist and conservationist, and Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine, had growing concerns about the devastating effects of sheep grazing in the high country. They launched a successful campaign to persuade Congress to set aside this area as a national park in 1890. On October 1, 1890, the U.S. Congress set aside more than 1,500 square miles of reserved forest lands, soon to be known as Yosemite National Park.”

(The first federal protections came earlier, on June 30, 1864 when President Abraham Lincoln signed a congressional act that established the “Yosemite Grant” in the Sierra Nevada — the first instance of the US government setting aside land specifically for preservation and public use, though not yet technically a “national park.”)

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the “Yosemite Grant” signing, I wrote a post about my own experience in the park, which includes a bit of my photographic history in the place, including a childhood photograph of me and my brother Richard Mitchell at a park trailhead many years ago, the earliest Yosemite photograph of mine, and a few later shots from the park. Enjoy!

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment — and the subjects may not always concern photography.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Commentary, Morning Musings, Photographers, Photographs: Photographers

Pick the Right Friends… (Morning Musings 9/29/14)

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G Dan Mitchell Photographing in the Sierra Nevada
G Dan Mitchell Photographing in the Sierra Nevada

If you are ever in the wilderness and you want someone to take a photograph of you, you could hand your smartphone to the nearest person and hope for the best. However, I have a few suggestions (slightly tongue-in-cheek) that might improve the odds:

  1. Arrange to be in the company of one of the best landscape photographers working today. (Yeah, that’s you, Charlie Cramer.)
  2. Make a photograph of him at work and hope that this inspires him to photograph you doing the same thing.
  3. Be sure to place yourself so that dramatic golden hour light hits you in partial profile.
  4. Be sure to position yourself against an appropriate background.
  5. Gaze attentively and thoughtfully into the distance. ;-)

Bonus hint: Be sure to level your tripod first, or your photographer friends may never let you live it down. ;-)

Here’s a photograph of Charlie at work, too

Photographer Charles Cramer
Photographer Charles Cramer

In all seriousness, when you are out shooting, do photograph your fellow photographers. Each of us needs photographs of ourselves, and a photograph by a friend (or of a friend) is a special thing.

Thanks, Charlie!

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Morning Musings, Photographers, Tongue in Cheek

Morning Musings: Secret Lives of Landscape Photographers (9/12/14)

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Secret (Banjo) Lives of Landscape Photographers
Landscape photographers relaxing with a little banjo music. (L-R: Scot Miller, Charles Cramer, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Mike Osborne, Karl Kroeber, G Dan Mitchell)

Secret (Banjo) Lives of Landscape Photographers. Sierra Nevada, California. September 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Landscape photographers relaxing with a little midday banjo music. (L-R: Scot Miller, Charles Cramer, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Mike Osborne, Karl Kroeber, G Dan Mitchell)

I know the romantic notions about the daily lives of landscape photographers: days full of stunning golden hour light, incalculable beauties everywhere at every moment, the sublime life, rainbows, unicorns, etc. But the truth is more complex. Up before dawn and out into the cold without breakfast, shooting for hours until the light turns “blah,” then a long, boring midday period before the beautiful light returns hours later, then photographing into the frigid darkness.

It is often a struggle to find something useful to do in the backcountry during those midday hours. There are meals to eat, tents to tidy, and naps to take, but the hours are still long. We think we’ve found a solution. There’s nothing like a few hours of backcountry banjo ensemble music to make the time pass more quickly. Here the group nears the conclusion of the Adagietto movement of Mahler’s Symphony #5.

So, the next time you are in the Sierra Nevada backcountry and you pass a group of heavily laden photographers with tripods, folding chairs, and banjo cases on their backs, stop and say “hi.” ;-)

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.

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