I’ve used the subway system in New York as much as any out-of-town visitor, enjoying the fact that I can get to so many places all over the city on the subway plus a little bit of walking. But I don’t give the system all that much thought beyond trying to get on the right time at the right time at the right place. But when you stop to think about what it is and what it does it is quite an amazing thing. Hidden away beneath the surface of the extraordinary busy city is an entire transportation system and only rarely comes to the surface, and then mostly as it leaves Manhattan or heads out into more distant areas.
On our recent visit to New York we managed to go visit the subway museum in Brooklyn. (Hard to avoid this, since it was literally walking distance from where we stayed this time.) The museum holds many things, but perhaps most intriguing is the collection of historic rolling stock, going way back to the beginning of the system. A visit got me to take the system a bit less for granted. We saw this car at the museum, but then again a few days later on one of the “nostalgia” train days, when the old trains run once again and subway fans turn out by the thousands. By framing this photograph so tightly and from a direct point if view, I hoped to “see” the train a bit more for what it is as a shape, and a bit of an odd one at that.
Welcome to this collection of some of my favorite photographs from 2014. I’ll get to the photos in a moment — yes, on this page! — but first a few stories, a shout out or two to fellow photographers and friends, and more…
This year I photographed a wide range of subjects from musicians to street photography to minimalist images to landscapes. It is always a challenge to select a few images from this variety of work, and invariably some photographs I love had to be left out. The group of photographs shown here was chosen because I like them, because they have been popular with others, and because they represent the diversity this year’s work. This year I think I can truthfully say that they range from the sublime to the ridiculous. (See if you can find the ridiculous one!)
Many wonderful places, subjects, and (especially) people were part of this year’s photography. Here is a partial accounting: The year began with photography of perhaps my favorite winter subject, the migratory birds and the often foggy landscape of California’s Central Valley — as always with friends David Hoffman, Charlotte Hoffman, Michael Frye, Claudia Welsh, and, of course, my wife Patricia Emerson Mitchell. Early in the year we traveled to Yosemite for a few days of shooting in conjunction with the opening of the annual Yosemite Renaissance exhibit, which again included some of my work — and in addition to the photography, it was great to see so many photographer/artist friends in the Valley. In the very early spring we had a good visit to Death Valley, one of my favorite and most frequent subjects — where we encountered snow and, for the first time in my life, I photographed wildflowers in a snowstorm! Among the summer highlights was a train trip across the US to spend a week photographing (and eating and much more) in New York City. Near the end of the summer I joined a group of good friends (Charlie Cramer, Keith Walklet, Mike Osborne, Scot Miller, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Karl Kroeber and a supporting cast of mules and wranglers) for an extended back-country shoot in Yosemite. Fall took me back to the Sierra for nearly a week of aspen color chasing, and then I made my way back to Utah for fall color and visits to some beautiful out of the way places and ultimately to meet up with family. (Thanks to fellow photographers on that trip: David Hoffman, Guy Tal, Colleen Miniuk-Sperry, Michael Gordon, Charlie Cramer, Bruce Hucko — and to my cousin Barbara and her husband Russ and a few in-laws I met up with near the end of the trip in Zion.) My biggest photographic focus during the fall was the completion of my three-year project to photograph professional classical musicians — and I’m very grateful to the musicians, conductors, management, and staff of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and Symphony Silicon Valley for their incredible cooperation.
A big “thank you!” to all of you who have followed my photographs here and on social media during the past year, and especially to fellow photographers (a few of whom appear in one of the photos!) that I’ve been fortunate to work with and count as friends. I’m grateful for your support! If this is your first visit to my site, consider bookmarking it, using the sidebar form to subscribe by email and/or…
(Click on any photograph below to switch to a larger scrolling view for best viewing. And I would love to hear what you think — which are your favorites in the group and so forth. Thanks!)
Dawn Light, Fog, Marsh and Tree
Purple Trillium
Point Sur
Pond, Fog, and Sky
Base of the Panamint Range
Desert Mountains, Rain
Backstage Before the Concert
Chinatown Street
The Selfie
Escalator and Stairs
Tropical Leaves
Ginko Leaves, Stones
Cottonwood, Red Rock Canyon
Roots and Rock
Potholes, Dusk
Cracked Mud, Canyon Light
Green and Yellow Aspens
Granite Slabs, Forest, and Lake
Forest Floor, Late Summer
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
Feet, legs, carpet, and a bit of white wall at the museum
Yes. It is at the museum…
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
Visitors pass through Gallery 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
It was a cold and rainy day in New York. For the most part we were fairly lucky with the weather when we visited between Christmas and New Years, with mostly fair though cold weather. But we finally encountered a day on which it was not going to be pleasant to travel around a lot on the subway, so we decided to head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Apparently about half of the people in New York City had the same idea! Although we arrived reasonably early, there was already a large line of umbrella-carrying folks standing in line, and once inside we found crowds everywhere. We were obviously not the only people to seek shelter in indoor activities. (For the most part the crowds in New York City don’t bother me too much, but on our subway trip back to our hotel after the museum visit I encountered the worst jam-packed subway that I had run into… and realized that this is not a place where I’m ever likely to live. Visit? Yes, and with pleasure!)
We have visited several times before, so we are starting to be familiar with a few sections of this huge museum. We visited a wonderful exhibit of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs (and realized how much of photographic portraiture she already understood more than a century ago) and a small exhibit of photographs from the past 40 years (some of which I liked a lot and some of which leaves me cold). We also wandered a bit, and when we entered this room not far from the main lobby, I spotted a stairway and though that it would be interesting to photograph the room from above. I was intrigued by the lighting, the crowds of people walking in every direction, their shadows, and the large figure of the statue in the center of the room. (As I photographed, using a small mirrorless camera, a guard must have thought that I was shooting video – which is apparently forbidden – and he started yelling at me from the lower level! I finished my shots and moved on.)
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
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
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.
