My Kitchen Window. San Francisco Bay Area, California. March 16, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
The view through blinds hanging outside my kitchen window.
Yup. My kitchen window. Why, you might wonder, did I make this photograph? I think there might be three reasons.
First, I’ve often said that I believe that I can find something to photograph within a few feet of anyplace I might find myself. A few photographer friends could tell you stories about me shooting from basically one spot for, on occasion, hours. Right now I’m recalling a meeting with a friend in Death Valley. We went to photograph a beautiful canyon area that I had overlooked and which she wanted to show me. We set up to shoot – I was on top of a small rise. As she ran around discovering this and that and the other fascinating thing, I continued to shoot from my original spot, perhaps for as long as an hour. It’s not that I don’t like to move. I can hike as well as the next photographer. But sometimes I can find so much in a small area that I don’t want to move. And I sure didn’t have to move much at all for this shot. I didn’t even have to leave the house!
Second, and speaking of house, there is a bit of a tradition among some photographers of making photographs in their immediately living environment. Here I’m thinking of a post from, if I recall, Cole Weston that I saw recently in which he shared photographs from seemingly mundane places… including his house and maybe even his bedroom. I believe that Huntington Witherill made the initial photographs for many of his beautiful digital manipulations of flowers in a spot in his home. And on and on. So, what the heck, a shot from my home. (Compared to these other photographers, I have to admit that my “home-grown” photographs have a way to go!)
Third, I had a new camera and I was anxious to try it out. The camera is a bit of a departure from the gear I usually use. (Typically I shoot with a full-frame DSLR system.) Because of some situations in which I want to travel and shoot light and fast, I decided to pick up a Fujifilm X-E1 along with a small set of lenses. This is a small mirrorless “rangefinder style” camera with similarly small lenses. (You can read more about the camera and my initial impressions here: “Fujifilm X-E1: From DSLR to Mirrorless. Hint: I like it.”) So this was probably just about the first photograph I made with that camera.
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.