Tag Archives: pacific northwest

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Oregon Sky

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Oregon Sky
A still lake, a band of forest shoreline, and sky with wildfire smoke in the Cascade Lakes region of Oregon.

Oregon Sky. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A still lake, a band of forest shoreline, and sky with wildfire smoke in the Cascade Lakes region of Oregon.

This, I suppose, is sort of a vacation photograph — a subject “snapped” with a handheld camera while on a hike. “Not a normal vacation snap!,” you say? Well, OK. To be honest, I’m not a very reliable family vacation photographer. I have to remind myself to make those “normal” (and important!) straightforward photographs of people and activities. And, somewhat sad to say, I came back with none of those at all from my recent family camping trip in the Cascade Lakes region of Oregon.

But I did bring this back. One morning, before joining the rest of the gang for morning camp festivities, I went for a short hike along the shoreline of Lava Lake. It was a very quiet and slow morning. I don’t think I met more than a couple of other hikes and the biggest action was the passing of a couple of kayakers. The lake was still since the day’s winds and not started yet, and there was a wildfire smoke haze in the sky. In this part of Oregon, at least on this day when the smoke obscured more distant features, the open sky dominated the landscape.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Things

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Red Things
Red awning and car, Portland, Oregon

Red Things. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Red awning and car, Portland, Oregon

Over the next week or so I plan to sneak in a few photographs from the urban world that I’ve had lying around here for a while. This one comes from a trip to Portland, Oregon a few years ago.

If this photograph is “about” something, it might be the color red. Sometimes in urban areas when my photographer brain is fully engaged, I move away from seeing “things” and instead see imagery that may be based on all sorts of elements. I’m pretty sure that I can make those who are with me wonder about my sanity by noting things like, “Look, the car, the paint, and the awning are all red! Too bad it isn’t parked in a red zone!”

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Commentary

Leaves in Rain

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Leaves in Rain
Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Leaves in Rain. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Leaves in rain, Portland, Oregon.

Californians have been dealing with strange weather patterns for more than a decade now — a five-year drought, a few years of way above average rainfall, and then the current season that has been almost completely rainless up until now. As I write this the pendulum is apparently about the swing the other direction, and the forecasts for my part of the state predict an “atmospheric river” storm later this week that has the potential to bring absurd amounts of rain over the course of a few days. It seems to be feast or famine, though the amount of recent rain famine has been the biggest concern.

While this photograph is evocative of the weather we’re about to have, it comes from a naturally wetter place a few hundred miles to the north, namely Portland, Oregon. On a spring visit a few years back we ended up in one of that cities urban parks on a cloudy and wet day, and as we wandered though gardens I stopped to photograph these leaves.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Garden Steps

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Garden Steps
Steps follow a curving path down an incline at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Garden Steps. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Steps follow a curving path down an incline at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Although it seems odd to me now, this is one of those photographs that I “left behind” at the time I made it. I no longer recall whether that was a matter of becoming distracted by something else or possibly I wasn’t able to see it correctly at the time. I only came across it again recently while doing my shelter-in-place review of my archives of older raw files. I had actually forgotten about the photograph — or, more accurately, a small series of photographs I made of this subject.

The specific location hardly matters, but it is in the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon. My recollection is that as we walked through this part of the garden and descended these steps I paused very briefly to make a few handheld exposures. There were other photographs from that day that seemed took my attention, and I apparently had too little left for this. But when I came upon it last week, it suddenly seemed like it would work in black and white.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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