Tag Archives: oregon

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Japanese Maple Leaves

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Japanese Maple Leaves - A small branch of a Japanese Maple tree.
A small branch of a Japanese Maple tree.

Japanese Maple Leaves. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A small branch of a Japanese Maple tree.

Japanese maple trees are ubiquitous in the gardens of Portland, Oregon, and during out early July visit to that town I had plenty of opportunities to photograph them. Here I decided to shoot a very small portion of a tree close up. I had been walking through this garden and focusing of larger views of whole trees and groups of trees and surrounding subjects, but when I walked past a small group of taller trees I noticed small twigs with a few leaves growing from the otherwise bare lower trunks and thought they might make interesting subjects themselves, especially in the very soft light in the shade of the taller trees.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden

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Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden - A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.
A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden. Portland, Oregon. July 2, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.

After our recent stay in Portland, Oregon, I understand that there is more to the city than beer. Though don’t overlook the beer… ;-) Portland seems to be a city of gardens, at least in the central portion where we spent most of our visit. This may be redundant, but there are beautiful gardens of all types and in a variety of places. We visited nearly a half-dozen, even though that wasn’t the primary goal of our trip. (And, no, it wasn’t the beer, either. But that did figure in our plans, too.)

On this day we were walking around portions of the downtown area, mostly south of the main downtown center. In the afternoon we decided to head north and east a bit and walk into Portland’s Chinatown area. It is a much different place than the more compressed and more touristy Chinatown of San Francisco. Our main goal was the Lan Su Chinese Garden. This garden is a beautiful little marvel, located in an area where you might not expect to find such a thing. Although it occupies a very small downtown block, there is much to see inside, especially if you walk slowly and look carefully. At one point I imagined what it might be like to be in such a place alone, so I made a point of trying to make a few photographs that didn’t include other visitors, such as this black and white photograph of a covered walkway winding along an edge of the garden.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Pacific Northwest

Iris Blossom, Japanese Garden

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Iris Blossom, Japanese Garden - A new iris blossom emerges against a background of summer greenery.
A new iris blossom emerges against a background of summer greenery.

Iris Blossom, Japanese Garden. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A new iris blossom emerges against a background of summer greenery.

I was in Portland, Oregon during the past week on a family visit. I’ve been to and through Portland before, but this was the first time I have been able to stay there for a substantial amount of time. Although this was not primarily a photographic trip – I didn’t even carry a tripod! – I did keep a camera with me, and I had some opportunities to do some informal photography while getting to know the place. I also had a chance to find out just how much of a garden city Portland is. During five days in the city I think we visited at least that many gardens, ranging from formal rose gardens (for which the city is famous), small and informal gardens, several Japanese and Chinese gardens, gardens around homes and historic buildings, and more.

I made this photograph of what I’m pretty certain is an iris (I’m actually very bad at plant identification…) while walking around one such garden. Shooting in shade on an overcast afternoon, the light was close to the limit of what I would want to try to shoot handheld, but I crouched down low and I think I managed to make it work. I like the slightly curving shape of the stem, with its partially unwrapped sections, and the flower itself illuminated by soft light from the sky.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Plants, Redwood Forest

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Plants, Redwood Forest - New spring growth on the forest floor among the redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, California.
New spring growth on the forest floor among the redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, California.

Plants, Redwood Forest. Muir Woods National Monument, California. April 29, 2011.© Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

New spring growth on the forest floor among the redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument, California.

This is another photograph that I have been “sitting on” for over a year. Back then I made a spring visit to the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, and, as always, arriving very early in the morning. By this time in late April the forest plants were growing like crazy, especially since this had been (and still was, at that point) an unusually wet season. Lush plants were growing everywhere on the forest floor beneath the canopy of coast redwoods, and there was water everywhere.

As I walked along the trail I was keeping my eyes out for small areas of foliage that were dense enough to be almost solid and which included combinations of more than one kind of plant. The undergrowth of “clover” – actually Oregon oxalis or redwood sorrel – was growing everywhere, but I wanted something other than a uniform patch of that plant. Near a trail junction in deep shade beneath the trees I found these plants. At the time I was thinking of a color rendition of the photograph, but as I worked on it in post I became frustrated with that possibility due to the difficult color of the shaded light and some reflections on the surfaces of the leaves. So I let this image go and moved on to others. I was recently revisiting raw files from 2011 and when I arrived at this one, it now seemed like it might be worth working on in black and white.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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

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.