Tag Archives: photo

Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Crowd in Tunnel

August 10, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A crowd of tourists walks through a brick tunnel in London, England

With this photograph I move in the street photography direction – and there are plenty of options to shoot such subjects in London. We had gone south across the Thames for some afternoon and evening “business” and we ended up walking around a bit between business A and business B, more or less wandering with the crowd through busy, narrow streets in this popular area. (I have been told that it wasn’t all that long ago that this was not nearly such a busy place, but that recent development, perhaps encouraged by the success of the New Globe Theater, has really changed the character of the place.) This gave me quite an opportunity to put my small Fujifilm X-E1 camera through its paces, as it is a small, rangefinder-style camera that brings to mind cameras typically used for this sort of photography in the past.

This photograph may not be everyone’s, uh, cup of tea – at least for those who might be more interested in my nature and landscape photography – but there are some things that I like about it quite a bit. To my eye, there are some very interesting things about the light. The distance area outside the tunnel is in full sun and is very bright, to the point that it almost over-exposed and its light spills over into the darker tunnel. This also backlights the people in the tunnel, though those closer to me pick up a bit of light from the other end of the tunnel behind my shooting position, and the shadows of the people on the shiny cobblestone create rays that spread across the lower part of the frame. I also like the sort of v-shape formed by the people at the instant I shot this, with what appears to be a family in the center and front and in slightly better light. There is, for me at least, a bit of humor, too – think about a comparison between the child at the very bottom of the frame and his concentration on his hands… and the man with the cell phone and his very similar focus.

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: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Granite Towers, Storm Clouds

August 9, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Storm clouds begin to clear about granite towers and spires, Yosemite Valley, California

These towers stand close to Sentinel Rocks in Yosemite Valley. The day had started out very cloudy, with light rain on the Valley floor and snow flurries around the rim of the Valley. As the day wore on the rain mostly stopped and there were breaks in the clouds, although the atmosphere stayed a bit on the murky side overall. That “murkiness” was not very conducive to a color photograph so I felt that this was more likely to end up in monochrome, as indeed it did. Because the sun is slightly behind the large towers and because the atmosphere was not completely clear, the towers took on a sort of ominous quality.

On a winter day when clouds ring the Valley I could easily spend hours with a long lens pointed up toward the rim, isolating little vignettes of clouds and trees and rock. For a place whose landscape seems to be so familiar, this provides an ephemeral alternate landscape that forms and disappears in moments. When I’m in the Valley, give me clouds!

Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Nature

Hiking to Die Eiskapelle

August 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Hiking the trail to Die Eiskapelle in the Bavarian Alps near Königssee

Between our two periods staying in Heidelberg, we took a train to Salzburg, Austria and then went back into Germany to stay at a farm-house in the Schönau am Königssee area for a week – a big farmhouse, large enough to accommodate a large contingent of my wife’s family, who had assembled from various points around the US and in Europe. This is a beautiful valley at the edge of the Bavaria alps, with fields and farms (and tourist accommodations) in the lowlands and towering peaks high above. On the first full day there, it seemed like the right thing to start out with a visit to Königssee, where we did, indeed, take the electric boats up the lake.

The boats land at a fairly developed area with large lawns, a beach, and places to eat and drink and buy souvenirs. We did a few of those things, but we also decide to take the popular hike up to Die Eiskapelle, a spot that seems to be on the edge of alpine country. This trail begins with a very civilized walk along a wide and gentle trail, but soon begins to climb a bit more steeply through mostly-hardwood forest. Finally it begins to follow the bed of a river that drains the valley above, and at the very end there seems to be no real trail. This last part was, no surprise, my favorite part! Here the feeling reminded me just a bit of off-trail travel high in the Sierra, and the route crossed rocks and bits of meadow between small trees as it approached a spot where the creek spilled out from beneath a permanent snowfield. This photograph was made not far from this area.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Rocks, Surf, and Dusk Horizon

August 7, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A curving rock shelf extends into the “blue hour” Pacific Ocean surf and toward the fog-darkened horizon as night approaches.

A short, evening visit to the California coast above Santa Cruz began with photography in golden hour light in areas where the fog bank hung just offshore with moist air over the coast creating a gentle, misty atmosphere and soft light. We photographed a few subjects in this light – and looked at others that we did not stop to shoot – and continued north as the sun dropped toward the horizon, where the fog waited to envelop it. We stopped at a beach where large groups of pelicans were resting and then resuming their flight along the coast, and noted that there was still a bit of light in the sky and, oddly, below the bottom of the fog bank along the horizon. As this light died, we turned briefly north, and I soon saw this rocky bench extending into the ocean waves.

Following the evening golden hour there is a time that some call the blue hour – when the warmer colors of sunset drain from the sky and we are left with soft, blue light. It might have seemed odd to anyone watching me photograph this rocky feature, but instead of hurrying to shoot it before the light faded, I took my time – I wanted the light to fade, both for the mysterious blue coloration and because this would make it easier for me to use extended exposure times to allow the water to soften and blur a bit. When I began shooting it was only dark enough to get exposures of perhaps a second or two – at least without adding a neutral density filter – but as I waited, making an occasional photograph in the interim, the light began to move toward a near-night state, and I was able to get exposures of 15 seconds or longer… and that blue light that I was looking for.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: photo

Crowd in Tunnel

Granite Towers, Storm Clouds

Hiking to Die Eiskapelle

Rocks, Surf, and Dusk Horizon

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