Tag Archives: old

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Old Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

January 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

This is a photograph that I wish I had seen this way while I was there! On the scene, while wandering into a beautiful section of a big, deep canyon to photograph water, sandstone, and fall colors, I came across these trees (or this tree – they may grow from a common root system) and made the photograph in landscape orientation… and only realized while working on it in post that I really like it in portrait orientation, too. So, yes, this is cropped from a larger original photograph.

I don’t know how others will “see” this, but for me this version recalls a lot of older monochrome photographs of subjects like this from an earlier era – the era in which I first came to be fascinated by photography. Way “back in the day” when I first did photography, with the encouragement and help of my father, virtually all of the photographers whose work inspired me shot black and white. With that in mind, and with my early experience involving how to shoot, develop, and print black and white, I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that I still love monochrome. (A number of my personal favorites among my own work are black and white.) In this one I even applied the virtual equivalent of the classic filtering to alter the tonal balance and lighten clouds and foliage and somewhat darken the massive, twisting forms of tree trunks and branches.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees and Cloud-Filled Sky

December 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Massive old cottonwood trees silhouetted against the cloud-filled autumn sky, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

This photograph was a sort of passing whimsy, in a sense. In this particular canyon that we visited in late October, our attention as mostly focused on avoiding inclusion of the sky in the frame. For the most part, the tall cliff walls were almost the default background for many photographs, so I paid little attention to the sky, for the most part, except to contrive ways to keep its distracting solid blue out of the frame, where it would distract from the colors and shapes and textures of rock and trees and water.

But when I came straight up to this tree just before we entered a narrow section of the canyon, it is was impossible ignore. It is actually a single tree that splits into two twin trunks near its base, with each trunk then sprouting a group of curving, twisting and interlocking branches high above the ground. With this subject, out in the open as it was, photographing it against the background of rock would not have worked, and it was so tall that I was essentially forced to shoot it with the camera pointing up. Fortunately, there were interesting clouds in the sky, and even more fortuitously the lines in the clouds roughly lined up with the left half of the v-shape of the two converging ridges down that canyon. Even better, this shallow “v” of the canyon rims and low peaks beyond echoed and cradled the somewhat similar shape found in the upper branches of the tree.

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Aspen Grove, Old Road

November 7, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

An old dirt road winds into the heart of an aspen grove in full autumn color, Dixie National Forest, Utah

This is another of the “could have been anywhere” photographs, both because little scenes like this can be found all over the American West and because it is a scene that I simply happened to notice while passing by. So, the specific location is most certainly unimportant, though I’ll say that it was along a gravel road running through a section of the national forest in roughly the Zion/Cedar City area, a road that we had turned up more or less randomly and then explored for perhaps a couple of hours before turning back. The goal of that little drive had been to get into or as close as possible to some extensive forests of colorful aspen trees that we had seen from a distance. We succeeded.

There is something evocative on a number of levels about a simple scene like this one – with factors including the literal and subjective aspects of the changing season, the image of the small road disappearing into the grove as it wanders off to an unknown place, and the light of autumn filtered through the golden canopy of aspen leaves. If you don’t pay careful attention when you are there you might miss it, but the golden color suffuses the entire understory when the light is just right. (Photographers and painters may notice this sort of thing more than most people, since we/they are used to dealing with the otherwise blue coloration of the shadow light.) This sort of scene is extremely transitory. While we can permit ourselves to believe that both the green time of summer and the snowy time of winter are relatively permanent, no such illusion is possible during the brief span of literally a few days when the aspen color comes to these groves – they are different every day, and sometimes you can literally see the color going away as the wind blows down the leaves.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Urban Canyons, Evening

July 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An urban landscape photographed in evening light, downtown San Francisco.

I spent a couple of days in downtown San Francisco earlier this month, with opportunities to photograph early and late in the day. Late in the afternoon I headed out and down Market street, starting out in less that amazing light but anticipating that things would certainly become more interesting as the evening wore on. On this particular walk I mostly headed to places that I already knew from many previous visits. I have often looked at this building and thought that it held to potential for a photograph that wasn’t just a “shot of the building,” but so far I had not actually come up with on. As I walked along the east side of the structure I saw that the very bright early evening sun was streaming across and between other tall buildings to the west and then past and through the columns in the left side of the frame. I positioned myself so that one of the columns just blocked the direct sun to make this photograph.

While I am perhaps mainly oriented to landscapes, both small and large, in my photography, I really enjoy shooting urban subjects as well. In some ways the experiences are very different – obviously the hustle and bustle of a major metropolitan downtown area feels a lot different from the quiet and solitude of the mountains, desert, or shoreline. But I respond to many of the same things in both places – juxtapositions of shapes, textures, and most important, the light. In the latter context, this photograph is not all that different from, say, one that features light flowing over the peaks of a Sierra ridge and down a canyon to pass between the trunks of trees. It is, after all, the same light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: old

Old Cottonwood Trees, Autumn

Aspen Grove, Old Road

Urban Canyons, Evening

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