Tag Archives: photos

Annual Favorites

2014 Favorite Photographs

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[Favorites collections from previous years: 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008]

Welcome to this collection of some of my favorite photographs from 2014.  I’ll get to the photos in a moment — yes, on this page! — but first a few stories, a shout out or two to fellow photographers and friends, and more…

This year I photographed a wide range of subjects from musicians to street photography to minimalist images to landscapes. It is always a challenge to select a few images from this variety of work, and invariably some photographs I love had to be left out. The group of photographs shown here was chosen because I like them, because they have been popular with others, and because they represent the diversity this year’s work. This year I think I can truthfully say that they range from the sublime to the ridiculous. (See if you can find the ridiculous one!)

Many wonderful places, subjects, and (especially) people were part of this year’s photography. Here is a partial accounting: The year began with photography of perhaps my favorite winter subject, the migratory birds and the often foggy landscape of California’s Central Valley — as always with friends David Hoffman, Charlotte Hoffman, Michael Frye, Claudia Welsh, and, of course, my wife Patricia Emerson Mitchell. Early in the year we traveled to Yosemite for a few days of shooting in conjunction with the opening of the annual Yosemite Renaissance exhibit, which again included some of my work — and in addition to the photography, it was great to see so many photographer/artist friends in the Valley. In the very early spring we had a good visit to Death Valley, one of my favorite and most frequent subjects — where we encountered snow and, for the first time in my life, I photographed wildflowers in a snowstorm! Among the summer highlights was a train trip across the US to spend a week photographing (and eating and much more) in New York City. Near the end of the summer I joined a group of good friends (Charlie Cramer, Keith Walklet, Mike Osborne, Scot Miller, Annette Bottaro-Walklet, Karl Kroeber and a supporting cast of mules and wranglers) for an extended back-country shoot in Yosemite. Fall took me back to the Sierra for nearly a week of aspen color chasing, and then I made my way back to Utah for fall color and visits to some beautiful out of the way places and ultimately to meet up with family. (Thanks to fellow photographers on that trip: David Hoffman, Guy Tal, Colleen Miniuk-Sperry, Michael Gordon, Charlie Cramer, Bruce Hucko — and to my cousin Barbara and her husband Russ and a few in-laws I met up with near the end of the trip in Zion.) My biggest photographic focus during the fall was the completion of my three-year project to photograph professional classical musicians — and I’m very grateful to the musicians, conductors, management, and staff of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and Symphony Silicon Valley for their incredible cooperation.

A big “thank you!” to all of you who have followed my photographs here and on social media during the past year, and especially to fellow photographers (a few of whom appear in one of the photos!) that I’ve been fortunate to work with and count as friends. I’m grateful for your support! If this is your first visit to my site, consider bookmarking it, using the sidebar form to subscribe by email and/or…

Follow me on social media: Facebook | Google+ | Twitter  | Flickr | ello | Pinterest | 500px.

Wishing everyone Good Light in 2015!

G Dan Mitchell

(Click on any photograph below to switch to a larger scrolling view for best viewing. And I would love to hear what you think — which are your favorites in the group and so forth. Thanks!)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.

Annual Favorites, Popular

2011 Favorites

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It is always very difficult to select a set of my annual “favorite” photographs. I inevitably find that I have left out photographs that others like a great deal, and I know that I include some that I like but which may not appeal as much to others. And I always want to include more! :-)

With that in mind, here is a group of slightly more than twenty favorite photographs that I made in 2011. Criteria for inclusion, loosely and subjectively applied, included: a desire to include a wide range of my work, what others told me they liked, photographs that have positive personal associations for me, and element of randomness.

There is a story behind every photograph that I make. (As anyone who has talked to me about one of my photographs probably knows – I can go on… and on… and on… about any of them!) If you want to know more about any of the photographs, you can click on them to go to the original posts here at the blog. And I’d love to hear your reactions to the set, along with any questions you have – there is a place for comments at the bottom of the page.

I hope you enjoy my 2011 Favorites!

Dan

(There is also a gallery version of 2011 Favorites – which may be better for low bandwidth connections.)

Yellow Buildings, Shadows, Moving Clouds - Night photograph of two large yellow buildings, shadows, and streaks for clouds moving across the sky above the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California.
Yellow Buildings, Shadows, Moving Clouds - Night photograph of two large yellow buildings, shadows, and streaks for clouds moving across the sky above the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, California.

Continue reading 2011 Favorites →

Commentary, Site News

All of My 2011 Photographs. Yes, All of Them. Really.

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Everything from 2011…

This youtube video includes all of the photographs posted at my blog during 2011.* Yes, all of them! The photographs appear more or less in the order they were made, so this forms a sort of year-long overview. Since it does include everything, there are going to be a few, uh, slow moments in the video. (I do not recommend viewing at full screen size on large monitors since the original images used in the video were relatively small.)

If this is a slow day for you, you could even watch the whole thing!

I put this together while doing initial work on the 2001 Favorites list, an annual project of assembling a set of what I regard as some of my best work of the past year. I have some ideas about which images will make the cut for that more limited set, but I’d love to hear your opinions about what you think should be included, too. I’ll post the “finalists” for the 2011 Favorites sometime in the next week or so.

* OK, I made a lot more photographs in 2011 than what you see here. But most will never be seen in public. :-)

(Update: A few people asked “why no music to accompany the photographs?” This brings up a whole series of thoughts that I should explore in depth at some point, but which I’ll mention briefly for now. Let me get the easy one out of the way first – this wasn’t meant to be a “real” production. It was just a way for me to string together a large number of images as part of my own review of my 2011 photographs. On to the more complex issues…

Some of you may know that my academic training is in music. So, for me, adding music to images is not a simple thing – I’m afraid that I’m cursed with thinking “too much” about what it means and how it works together. For me, the idea of just “adding some music” is not a simple idea at all. In fact, it raises some questions about why we think that individual photographs are worthy of consideration in silence… but sequences of them seem to raise expectations that a musical accompaniment will be provided. Finally, given the diverse images in this large set it is hard for me to come up with a meaningful musical accompaniment that somehow ties in with the images in more than a random way. I suppose that I really need to compose my own… )

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.

Community, Photographers

Jim M Goldstein’s Gigantic “Best Photos of 2010” Meta-List

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For the past few years photographer and blogger Jim M. Goldstein has been collecting and sharing an annual list of online photographers’ “best of the year” posts. (More and more of us make this an annual event around the time of the New Year – I posted my 2010 Favorites list a couple weeks ago.)

Today, after what must have been a very complex organizational task, Jim posted his Best Photos of 2010 list. It now includes the work of over 160 photographers – yes, I’m in the list – and if you take the time to follow his links you’ll find a wide range of photography including some stunning and compelling work. If you have some free time (or your boss isn’t looking… :-), wander on over to his link and enjoy!

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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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.