Tag Archives: pattern

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley

Three Towers, Morning

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Three Towers, Morning - Three tufa towers in morning light, surrounded by wind-blown patterns on the surface of Mono Lake, California.
Three tufa towers in morning light, surrounded by wind-blown patterns on the surface of Mono Lake, California.

Three Towers, Morning. Mono Lake, California. July 14, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Three tufa towers in morning light, surrounded by wind-blown patterns on the surface of Mono Lake, California.

In mid-July I was in the Tuolumne/Tioga Pass area of the Sierra for a few days of photograph. In the end, I decided to stay over one extra night so that I could drive down to photograph around Mono Lake early in the morning before heading home. I was up before dawn, quickly in my car, and down to the shoreline of Mono Lake before sunrise. My first objective was to try to photograph sand tufa formations – not the more famous tufa towers. I found what I was looking for, and spend the sunrise period photographing them in first light. However, this opportunity quickly ended, so I turned my attention to the lake itself, along with its surroundings of low hills.

While the tufa towers are the iconic visual symbols of Mono Lake, I have some other and perhaps strong associations with the place. Most of them are connected to a time of day, early morning, when I most often visit. They involve near silence, broken only by the sounds of the many gulls and other birds that are found in and around the lake. In my memories, the air is still, and it is warm, the warm of early an early desert morning that holds the smell of sage and dust. And while the moment of sunrise is what I often go there to find, in the end it is the light that comes a bit later that sticks most in my mind. This light is bright – almost too bright to look into if the lake is hazy – and it is blue with distance. This is the light that I saw on this morning, with a bit of very light breeze forming slight patterns on the surface of the lake near three isolated tufa towers.

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

Reflective Building

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Reflective Building - Reflections in the windows of a downtown tower, San Francisco
Reflections in the windows of a downtown tower, San Francisco

Reflective Building. San Francisco, California. July 9, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Reflections in the windows of a downtown tower, San Francisco.

I photographed the exterior of this building while walking in the financial district of San Francisco in the early evening. I was mainly shooting street subjects with a 50mm prime, but fortunately I had a telephoto zoom in my bag that I could use to isolate this section of the building from its surrounding context. In addition, I decided to take some liberties with the image in post, including some serious perspective adjustments that brought the vertical lines into nearly parallel alignment.

When walking around in an urban environment like this one, it is easy to focus on the grit and “reality” and noise and all the rest. But if you look past that you can find some astonishing images in this environment, some of which are quite abstract and perhaps border on hallucinations. This is a building – that is fairly obvious. But what in this photograph is actually the building? Not much. The thin, darker vertical lines are the frames around the window glass, as are the even thinner diagonal lines running upward from left to right. If you look closely you can see a few bits and pieces of what is inside the building, mostly in the form of interior lighting. But the main portion of the image is not really the building at all, instead consisting of warped and distorted forms that are the reflections of its surroundings, reflected in its glass surface.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Hostas Leaves #2

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Hostas Leaves #2 - Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden
Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden

Hostas Leaves #2. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden.

I made this small series of photographs of the leaves of hostas plants while wandering around the extensive rose gardens at Portland, Oregon’s Washington Park. I’m not a big fan of photographing roses – though I’m fascinated by looking at them – so I had not made any photographs while visiting that primary area of the garden, but once we began to poke around in some of the peripheral gardens that featured other kinds of plants I started to see things that attracted my own photographic interest more strongly. This set of leaves was in a large bed of hostas plants along a walkway and in the shade, and I thought that the colors and textures of their overlapping leaves created some very interesting patterns.

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.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Hostas Leaves #1

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Hostas Leaves #1 - Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden
Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden

Hostas Leaves #1. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden.

I made this small series of photographs of the leaves of hostas plants while wandering around the extensive rose gardens at Portland, Oregon’s Washington Park. I’m not a big fan of photographing roses – though I’m fascinated by looking at them – so I had not made any photographs while visiting that primary area of the garden, but once we began to poke around in some of the peripheral gardens that featured other kinds of plants I started to see things that attracted my own photographic interest more strongly. This set of leaves was in a large bed of hostas plants along a walkway and in the shade, and I thought that the colors and textures of their overlapping leaves created some very interesting patterns.

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.