Tag Archives: new

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Recovering Forest

Image September 20, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A recenty-burned Yosemite forest shows signs of regeneration.

Wildfires have recently been on our minds here on the west coast. In the San Francisco Bay Area the bad fires began about a month ago when an unusual and very active series of electrical storms set off dozens of fires and shrouded the area in smoke. Shortly after that our extremely dry summer and unusually hot August temperatures set off huge fires from California to Oregon, historic in size and intensity. (As of this date one of these fires has set a record for the largest fire ever in California, doubling the size of the previous record fire.) We’ve had a month of “spare the air” days now.

September and October are traditionally the fire season here, though not on the scale that we are experiencing this year. It is a time of hazy skies and, if you go to the mountains, active fires. Over the years we’ve moved from regarding fire as something to be avoided to thinking of it as something to be managed — it is a natural component of healthy wildlands. I’ve changed my attitude as well, at least when it comes to normal, modest fires, and I’ve been trying to see the beauty in burned landscapes. In early September I had planned a short Yosemite backpack trip, but (ironic!) I had to back out at the last minute due to smoke. I was on my way home when I stopped at this location, a place where I stop and photograph every year, especially when dogwoods bloom. Last season a fire burned over this spot and, blackening many of the largest trees and destroying undergrowth. But a few trees survived and they are now thriving.

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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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Urban Forest Spring

Image August 26, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring leaves on a tree in front of San Francisco’s One Front Street building.

Today’s photograph temporarily climbs out of the sandstone valleys and slot canyons of Utah to enter a different kind of canyon in the urban landscape. This striking building is found in downtown San Francisco, and I’ve photographed it quite a few times during my street photography walks in The City. Unfortunately, those are on hold right now due to the lock-down, so I mined this one from my old raw file collection.

While I don’t approach photographing the natural landscape and the city in exactly the same way, there are more connections than might seem to be the case at first. I look for shape and line in both cases, and I consider how things are juxtaposed in both landscapes. And here, as in essentially photography, light is a key factor. One thing that is a bit more present in urban photography — and which is a source of interest to me — is the way that reflections play into the compositions.

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Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Bamboo Fence, New and Old

Image August 12, 2020 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A partially updated bamboo fence, Portland, Oregon

Seems like I still have one more photograph from our 2012 visit to the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon. We were there on a family visit and I was traveling light when it came to photography, taking only a single camera and one lens. A bit to my surprise, it turned out that we had some good photographic opportunities, so I made the best of the minimal gear.

The garden of course features beautifully arranged and managed plant life, but it also includes a lot of structures, ranging from small buildings to bridges and fences and benches and more. The form of this fence attracted me — I do like geometry! But I was also intrigued by the juxtaposition of new and old sections of the fence, a reminder that such things are not static but rather in a state of continual change.

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