One advantage of shooting with other talented photographers is that every so often one of them actually produces a good photograph of me! On last weekend’s visit to the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and the Artist Point area, my brother Richard Mitchell (Touching Light Photography) was my guide and fellow photographer – and he made a photograph of me that I like quite a bit. Thanks, Richard!
G Dan Mitchell at Mt. Shuksan. Photograph © Copyright Richard Mitchell. Used by permission.
Sliding Rock, Cloudy Morning – Racetrack Playa. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Black and white photograph of a “sliding rock” on a cloudy morning at the Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park, California.
The weather gods were not on my side during my visit to the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley near the end of March. My plan was to shoot sunset and sunrise, and in between to do night photography. As I drove out there on the terrible washboard gravel road my hopes were high – I saw some interesting looking clouds that looked like they might even form into lenticular clouds. When I arrived I shot a bit in decent light at the “Grandstand” feature near the north end of the playa.
Unfortunately, the good light was short-lived. Before I left the Grandstand a high, thin back of clouds spread across the sky. It stayed in the evening (tantalizing me with some bits of clear sky far to the west), blocked the full moon all night, and was still there when I wandered out onto the playa in the morning to do some early shots. It never did really clear, and I came back from the playa with far fewer good images than I expected. (I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve had uniform great luck with lighting on every previous visit, so I was probably due for less than great light.)
In order to make this photograph work I did quite a bit of post-processing, some of which I anticipated when I made the exposure. First of all, I realized that getting everything from the very close rock to the distant ridge in focus would be a problem. So I made three exposures, “focus bracketing” them with one focus on the far ridge, one focused on the rock, and one focused in between. I made a blend of the three exposures in post, keeping the most focused portions of each.
Because the light and colors were fairly flat I decided to go with a black and white interpretation. The conversion was fairly straightforward, but here I also decided to indulge in a bit of post-processing. I duplicated the background layer, turned it into and “overlay,” and added some Gaussian blur. With a bit of dodging, burning, and work with curves, the image ended up where I imagined it would.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
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Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM at 80mm
ISO 200, f/16, 1/10 second
keywords: sliding, moving, gliding, rock, stone, racetrack, race, track, playa, cracked, mud, earth, ground, cloudy, mountain, hill, barren, desert, rugged, track, trail, black and white, monochrome, death valley, national, park, california, usa, north america, landscape, nature, travel, scenic, stock
Ocean Beach, Winter Surf. San Francisco, California. January 31, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Black and white photograph of winter surf along Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California.
On a day like this one it was hard to resist shooting from an obvious spot like this – right by the Cliff House, looking south along the incoming winter surf at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. With the strong backlight coming through the ocean spray and overcast and fog, the light was very diffused, and it made it possible to shoot directly into the otherwise impossibly bright direct reflections of the sun on the surf. A lot of what is in this photograph is subtle, and you might miss it in this small on-screen image – but look for the very faint outline of the distant hills of the San Francisco Peninsula and the subtle differences in tonality in the cloudy sky.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
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keywords: san francisco, california, usa, sutro, baths, cliff, ocean, sea, coast, shore, pacific, surf, travel, scenic, beach, waves, foam, seascape, landscape, people, beach, sand, mountain, hill, great, highway, sky, clouds, mist, spray, haze, silhouette, atmosphere, recession, winter, season, stock, black and white
Michael Frye just posted the second in his weekly series of photograph critiques. It is no surprise that he offers insightful and relevant commentary of the photos, but I want to especially note the nature of his critiques.
A lot of what passes for photo criticism on web forums and elsewhere is less than wonderful stuff. I see all too many that fall into a couple of predictable and not very helpful categories. On one hand I see the shallow and quite meaningless one-liner comments: “Great work!” and “Stunning photo!” and “It sings” and the like are, of course, positive – but they provide very little to the photographer than a momentary warm feeling… which quickly when one realizes that the lack of depth in the responses suggests that the photograph didn’t really engage the viewer. On the other hand we see plenty of examples of the “let me tell you why you suck” school of criticism: these often inform the photographer than he/she ignorantly violated some “rule” of photography and can sometimes degenerate into little more than lists of “everything I can find to dislike in your work.” A lot of this stuff comes from people who honestly think that this is what “criticism” is supposed to be, but some of it comes from folks who should know better.
Given the prevalence of poor public critiquing, I’m especially grateful to Michael for demonstrating the features of good criticism. Some things you’ll note in his series: He begins by finding and acknowledging the admirable and interesting in the work being critiqued; he avoids the “this is wrong” or “you shouldn’t do that” commentary; he shares his reaction to the image, letting the photographer know how and why he responded to it; when he has a different idea he offers the alternative to the original artist rather than insisting; he illustrates what he might do differently; and he concludes by looping back to the positive aspects of his observations.
I’ve never had the opportunity to observe Michael lead a workshop, but if the approach he uses in the online critiques is any indication, I’ll bet that there is a lot to be learned from him at his workshops.