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2014 Favorite Photographs

December 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 16 Comments

[Favorites collections from previous years: 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008]

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…

Wishing everyone Good Light in 2015!

G Dan Mitchell

(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!)

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: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

At the Museum

February 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Feet, legs, carpet, and a bit of white wall at the museum

Yes. It is at the museum…

Photographs: New York City

Room 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art

January 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.)

Annual Favorites

2013 Favorite Photographs

January 4, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 27 Comments

“With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.” – Ansel Adams

I have compiled annual “favorites” collections for almost ten years. Each year I think this will just be an exercise in selecting photographs, and each year I rediscover that it is more than that – an opportunity to reflect on growth and new ways of looking at the world, a chance to think forward about what is yet to come, a time to recall a year of places and experiences and friendships.

It is a hard to distill a year’s work down to a few photographs, and I’m afraid that I can’t reduce the number to the extent that some can. This year I have – painfully! – gotten it down to 18 images, which is perhaps still too many. But it is 25% fewer than the 24 I shared last year! (Adams also said, “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” So feel free to regard up to a half dozen of these as being insignificant! ;-)

Many things affected my final selection. High on the list is how others – including many of you – responded to my photographs. I often say that the photographer is the person least able to objectively view and understand his/her own work, and I value the feedback and response that you share with me. On the other hand, I like to include some photographs that get less attention because I believe in them. I also include examples from my diverse range of subjects – people, wildlife, landscape, cityscape and street, night photography.

Speaking of a range of subjects, this was a year of interesting and diverse photographic adventures. Some were familiar – visits to Death Valley, the nearby Pacific Coast, the streets of San Francisco, familiar Sierra locations, and more. Others reflect more recent interests, such the migratory birds of California’s Great Central Valley. I spent more than a week camped in a remote Sierra Nevada location with photographer friends, becoming deeply familiar with the details of that particular landscape. I traveled to urban destinations: New York City, London, Germany, Austria. I continued work on my long-term project to photograph classical musicians.

But, enough introduction. In no particular order, though grouped according to subject, here are some of my favorite photographs of 2013. For those who want to know more, I have included links to the original posts of the images, where you may read more background – click the images themselves or the “original post” links.

Coastal California

I am very fortunate to live relatively close to a huge range of photographic subjects. One of the closest and most impressive is the Pacific Ocean coastline of California, and it is near enough that I can head over there for a morning or an evening when the conditions seem promising.

Beach and Bluffs, Evening. Pacific Coast, California. August 2, 2013.

Evening light and fog along the Pacific coast north of Santa Cruz, California. (Original post)

Living less than an hour from the Pacific coastline south of San Francisco, I have the good fortune of being able to shoot there often, and I have come to know some sections of this coastline very well. On this summer evening I was cruising up the coast looking for subjects when I passed this familiar location, one that I had passed many times without stopping due to the scarcity of places to pull over on this narrow highway. The hazy fog, the warm evening light, and the curving surf line got my attention and this time I stopped, put a long lens on the camera, and made this exposure while standing far too close to the passing traffic.

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Tag Archives: of

2014 Favorite Photographs

At the Museum

Room 160, Metropolitan Museum of Art

2013 Favorite Photographs

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