Tag Archives: north

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building Reflections

October 12, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Distorted reflections in windows of Chicago downtown towers

As I have mentioned in earlier Chicago posts, I like the way that Chicago’s more open urban design provides more opportunities to clearly see the many tall buildings, allow more light to get deeper down into the space, and makes the interactions between the buildings more visible. As with many of the others, I made this photograph from the Chicago River while on the architectural boat tour of the downtown area. This tour offers views of many, many of the downtown towers and other subjects, though it can be a bit tricky to photograph them — they do move past quickly and it is pretty much necessary to shoot handheld.

If I recall correctly (without taking the time to review the sequence of my raw files), I made this photograph somewhere along the south branch of the river, where there was a momentary juxtaposition of the lower building with its visible exterior framing and the much larger glass-encased building with its curving surface on the left side. If you look closely at the photograph you will notice that very little of what you see is the actual structure of buildings, aside from that external skeleton in the lower building and the narrow frames of the windows on the higher one. Virtually everything else in the photograph of the builds is arguably not the buildings but instead is some sort of distorted reflection of its surroundings.

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.

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Marina City

October 11, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Detail of Chicago’s Marina City Building

In a city of architecture that attracts attention, both from its form and on account of its visibility, the Marina City buildings stand out. The are cylindrical forms standing in a group and housing a variety of things from offices to apartment and even a parking garage. I like to think of the architecture as being a sort of Early Jetsons style. ;-)

It is not surprise that I had noticed them on earlier Chicago visits, and I had regarded them as sort of landmarks from which I could orient myself in this part of downtown. This time I got to take a closer look at several points, including during our boat trip past architectural features along the Chicago River. By the way, they don’t really tilt like this…

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Mt. Conness, Dusk

October 10, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light falls across Mt. Conness and northern Yosemite wilderness

This ridge holds an astonishing range of photographic subjects, ranging from the smallest (tiny trees growing through cracks in the rock) through the intimate landscapes of trees and boulders and culminating in some grand vistas of distant ridges and peaks. For several days, even though there were other nearby subjects calling out to me, I returned repeatedly to this area, whose size cannot be more than a few acres.

I climbed up to photograph on this ridge one final time on our last night at this location. At first I went back to take care of some unfinished business — photographing subjects that I had seen but not shot on previous evenings, looking for a few in evening light that I had noticed at other times of the day, and working to perfect and distill images of certain subjects that I had photographed earlier. I finished most of that work as the sun set and the light began to go, and I started back across the ridge toward camp. As I crossed the ridge I caught a view of distant Mount Conness — named after the senator whose bill created Yosemite as a national park in the 1800s — in the glow of post-sunset dusk light that was still illuminating the foreground forest and granite.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Tree, Canyon, Wildfire Haze

October 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Smoke from the 2014 Meadow fire colors late afternoon light on a tree and granite canyon in the Yosemite backcountry.

After a number of days spent photographing at a higher elevation location, our group descended into one of the great river canyons of the Yosemite backcountry, where we made camp for the final days of our 10-day photographic trip. This change gave us the opportunity to shoot a number of subjects that were quite different from those that we concentrated on at the earlier location, and it also let us revisit some locations and subjects that we had all photographed in the past. While some might wonder at the notion of revisiting a place when so many new places remain unexplored, there is something special about returning to a place and learning its patterns more deeply.

On this afternoon I ascended a nearby granite ridge, from which there is a wonderful view down this river canyon as it descends toward California’s Central Valley. As is typical at this time of year in the Sierra — though a bit more prevalent than usual in this drought year — the haze, smell, and coloration of wildfire smoke was in the air. In this photograph, the smoke and the late hour produced an unusual coloration in this scene as I shot through the trunk and branches of a large tree on the ridge.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: north

Building Reflections

Marina City

Mt. Conness, Dusk

Tree, Canyon, Wildfire Haze

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