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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Row of Trees, Evening

February 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of bare trees stands next to a pond in evening light at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Central Valley, California.

While photographing migratory birds in early February at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge in California’s Central Valley, just before sunset there was a lull in the “bird action,” and I realized that I had neglected to photograph much of anything besides the birds. With this in mind, I left the edge of the ponds where we had been shooting, and I took a short walk along a nearby trail that went out into some brushy areas that generally seemed sort of nondescript. Except… I’m fascinated by brushy, scrubby trees and brush and I’m always challenged when it comes to thinking about how to make photographic sense of this subject. In the right light the shapes and subtle colors can be quite interesting, but it can also be tricky to find a composition in the dense growth.

As I walked I passed along a small pond, and at first I noticed the reflection of a tree whose trunk was branching out in many different directions and its mirrored image in the water. Then I saw this row of barren trees, which I assume might have been planted along the levee as some sort of wind break. Their straight forms were tall and parallel, except that here and there this orderly form was broken up by a trunk or branch pointing off in some odd direction and creating a bit of visual dissonance. Since it was the lens I already had on the camera for photographing birds, I made this landscape photo with what might seem to be the least likely of landscape lenses, a 100-400mm zoom!

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Railing, Stairs, and Window – Museum of Modern Art

September 28, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Edge of an upper landing with a railing, stairs, and windows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

I think I have visited, at least briefly, the Museum of Modern Art every time I have been in New York City. (As a “west coaster” that isn’t all that often, but still…) My secret is that photographing inside and around the museum is, for me, almost as interesting as viewing the exhibits. There is a ton of interesting subject material to work with: the people, the interior (and to a lesser extent, exterior) architecture of the place, details that can be found by looking around a bit, the surrounding neighborhoods, and juxtapositions of any and all of these things.

We visited a wonderful show of photography when we were there this year, and at the end of a hallway outside the entrance to this show I saw this translucent wall of windows with a glow enhanced by, if I recall correctly, some cloudiness outside. Shooting quickly with the 50mm prime that was on my camera, I first grabbed some shots mostly of these windows. Then I tried a few that focused more on the stairway seen here at lower right. Finally, I narrowed it down to just this bit of curving railing and floor, throwing the rest of the scene out of focus by shooting at the largest aperture.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures

Detail, EMP Museum, Seattle

September 3, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Distorted and colorful reflections on the metal surface of the Frank Gehry-designed EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington.

I made this photograph, and a series of them of this subject, during a visit to Seattle back in 2006. After seeing the exhibits at the EMP Museum, I spent some time wandering around the Frank Gehry designed building and looking for photographs.

Seattle seems like a great place to photograph architecture – you are almost guaranteed soft light! Here I had a mostly cloudy sky with a few spots of blue sky, so the basic light was very nice. In addition, the building itself is, in places, one giant fun house mirror. In this shot the reflective panels are picking up their own coloration, some clouds and blue sky, and some extremely distorted reflections of nearby carnival rides – and all of that stuff is set off against the sky blue curving shapes projecting from the building at the upper right. Some of the colors reflected in the wall panels are so colorful as to almost be over-saturated, and with the strange distortions they create the effect seems almost hallucinogenic! Is there any color that cannot be found somewhere on that wall?

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Commentary, Ideas, Thinking Aloud

Brief Thoughts on The Life of a Photograph

July 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

The image I posted earlier today both here at the blog and on Google+ got me thinking about the various ways that a photograph can “come to life.” This particular image followed a path that several other images that I consider to be among my best followed – namely, it languished in my raw file archive for nearly a year before I rediscovered it recently while going back through the old files. I recognized this pattern some time ago, and I now make it a habit to revisit all of my (thousands and thousands of) raw files about a year after I shoot them.

Why didn’t I “see” this image when I first reviewed raw files right after the shoot? I’m not entirely certain, but several ideas come to mind. Sometimes at the time of the shoot I have a strongly fixed notion of how I want to portray the subject , and as I shoot I’m already categorizing exposures by how well they correspond to this preconception. So when I initially go through the raws I may be mostly looking for what fits my expectations as opposed to looking objectively at what works on its own merits. Coming back a year later allows me to better see the image for what it is, without having my judgment so affected by prior expectations.

Related to this is the sheer number of images and how one deals with them in the post-processing workflow. I may begin with what I think are the most promising couple of images from a shoot and then take them all the way to a print-ready (or actually printed) stage. Once I’ve done that with the first selects from a given subject, I’m more likely to move on to other subjects – and potentially leave other good images in the dust.

There is a lot more to say about this, I think, but I’ll save the longer explication for another blog post in the future. Does anyone else make a practice of doing a full review of raw files at some future date?

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