Tag Archives: monochrome

Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Kitchen Tools #1

Image December 21, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Indeed, I made more than one photograph in the kitchen this week. Will this be a new stylistic direction in my photography? Stay tuned and find out! Like yesterday’s photograph, this subject was on the kitchen counter. I needed something to test out a new camera with a macro lenses, no tiny bugs were handy, so here we are.

As I pondered these two kitchen photographs it stuck me that the patterns, especially with all of the soft blur in the images, reminded me of some close-up photograph s I have made of grasses and similar plants.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures

Kitchen Tools #2

Image December 20, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

When looking for subjects to test (otherwise know as “get to know”) a new camera or lens, it is amazing what things one can find to photograph! This week I’m trying to get up to speed on a new camera — more about that below — and how it works with some lenses I already have. On this evening I slapped a macro lens on the thing and headed to the kitchen to photograph… a whisk, blender blades, coffee cups, and others stuff that was lying around.

It is important to me to both understand objectively how my camera equipment functions and to develop an intuitive familiarity with it. The former helps me make smart decisions, and the latter is very important in the field, where I don’t want to get stuck wondering how the gear works. In this case, the new equipment is a Fujifilm X-T5 that I got to upgrade from the XPro2 that I’ve been using for my “small camera” photography for the past few years. For this photograph and a few others like it I put the Fujifilm 80mm macro on the camera.

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.

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: Sierra Nevada

Eastern Escarpment

Image December 18, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A section of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada.

This is another in a short series of photographs I made of a section of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada this fall. I had spent several day photographing aspen color — with a side trip up to the White Mountains to visit the bristlecone pine forest — and as I started home I noticed somewhat unusual conditions for midday that seemed like they might just work for photography. Specifically, there were high, thin clouds muting the harsh sun just a bit. So I wandered off the main route a bit and poked around looking for interesting views pack up toward the peaks.

This scene encompasses a range from the lowest hills right above the valley all the way to the peaks at the summit of the range. This particular cross section is a bit unusual, as it really includes hills and mountains from bottom to top — desert hills in the foreground and the alpine zone far above.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature

Levee Road, Fog, and Tree

Image December 12, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn tule fog glows in morning sun, blankets a Central Valley levee road, and obscures an old tree.

The subject here is an old Central Valley tree along a levee road on a very foggy autumn morning. You may recall that my previous photograph of a fog-obscured tree from this location was in color — thought just barely, as I wrote about in that post. Color was similarly subtle (as in “nearly absent”) in this scene, too, so I went ahead and interpreted the scene in black and white.

The quiet and moody quality of this scene, of course, comes largely from the tule fog. But that is enhanced by the way it glows in the back light from the sun, seen just above and slightly to the left of the tree. The fog is very thick here, but not very deep, and even though visibility was probably little more than 100 feet, the sunlight was able to penetrate and light up the fog.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: monochrome

Kitchen Tools #1

Kitchen Tools #2

Eastern Escarpment

Levee Road, Fog, and Tree

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