Tag Archives: print

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

Morning, Riverwalk

October 19, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two men on the Chicago Riverwalk in the early morning

Let me begin by telling a story on myself. The last time I was in Chicago, which was some years back, I was there for a conference related to my work as a college faculty member. I flew in to town, went straight downtown, and spent three or four days engaged almost entirely in conference stuff at the hotel, mostly eating there with the exception of one dinner out in a place I’m sure I could not find my way back to. It was November, and at one point I thought I would go out for a walk. Silly California boy! I believe that I walked out one hotel doorway and made it as far as the next one before the cold and wind convinced me to think of a different activity. The point of all of this is that I really did not see the city and, in fact, I was so unaware that I managed to get my directions off by about 90 degrees.

This has happened to me elsewhere, most notably in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. I normally have a very good sense of direction, but when I arrive at Tuolumne, to this day my world rotates (incorrectly) by 90 degrees. In the case of Chicago, the problem for me was that I got the idea that the Chicago River headed through town in a southerly direction — and, as any Chicagoan knows, that is absurd… it goes east. Perhaps if I had actually gone out and walked the Chicago Riverwalk, like these two guys, on that earlier visit I would not have spent the first day or so of this visit trying to rotate my mental map by 90 degrees!

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: Chicago, Photographs: Urban/Street

East Madison Street

October 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon light on East Madison Street, Chicago

We had been in roughly the Millennium Park area for a good part of this day, wandering around and looking at stuff and visiting a museum, and we were (if I recall correctly) heading back toward our hotel in the late afternoon, planning to perhaps take a break before figuring out where to go for Chicago style pizza. (One goal on this trip was to have both Chicago and New York pizza. After all, pizza research is a solemn duty.)

I’ve noted elsewhere that Chicago’s tendency to combine tall downtown buildings with more open space allows a lot of beautiful light to reach down to ground level and it sometimes permits clearer views up and down streets. As we walked past this intersection, marking the end of East Madison, the late light was coming straight up the street from the west, though slightly hazy and soft atmosphere, striking the sides of buildings and silhouetting people and vehicles on the street. This was light to stop for!

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Bare Trees, Wall of Leaves

October 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A row of bare aspen trees stands in front of a grove of colorful aspens

This photograph was almost an afterthought at the end of an evening of shooting up high in an east-side Sierra canyon where many of the trees had lost their leaves, and the rest were at the brilliantly colorful phase that comes right before the leaves fall. When I came up the canyon I took a little gravel side road that passes through another grove of small but interesting trees before heading on up to the end of the road “just because it was there.” This is not an obvious photographic spot, since the trees are not large and because it can be difficult to find the right backgrounds.

There is something special about soft, evening light on fall foliage, and especially on aspens. It can produce a very intense quality of color, and the soft light shines into shadows and lowers contrast. As I moved slowly up this small roadway I could see that there was a band of quite colorful trees along the banks for the creek, and that between me and this color there was a thinner line of trees that had already lost their leaves. This let the stark trunks and branches of these trees stand out against the wall of color from the trees that still hadn’t lost their leaves.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sierra Aspen Groves, Autumn

October 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Aspen groves in varying states of autumn color, eastern Sierra Nevada

This photograph was a bit of an unplanned surprise. (The truth is that quite few aspen photographs are just that — partly because I’m always looking around for places I haven’t photographed before, and partly because one never knows what the aspen conditions will like until arrival on the scene.) I had started my morning with a plan that evolved a bit. Up well before sunrise, my initial plan to was to explore an area of east-facing slopes along the edge of the Sierra where I knew that colorful trees would be scattered about. As I drove to what seemed like the obvious starting point, I thought about a very large grove that I had earlier spotted very high up on these slopes… and as I looked that direction I saw a set of headlights up there! That was all the encouragement I needed to find a narrow a steep track that took me way up high on a ridge from which I photographed those trees at dawn.

When I finished shooting there I took a few minutes to finally eat something and then figured that I would try a “sure bet” location nearby. I drove back down the single-track gravel route, got back on pavement, and headed there. Sure enough, there was a lot of brilliant color in this area. As I drove up the road I spotted rows of aspens at the edge of a meadow, still in soft shaded light, but not seeing a photograph there and with my mind on another subject up ahead, I kept going. Before long I was done with that “other subject” and I decided to head toward a third (and non-aspen) subject, so I turned around and headed back the way I came. As I passed this spot again, something about the light and the trees caught my attention again — mainly the soft effect of light reflected into this shaded grove — so I stopped and made a series of photographs that mostly just “show what is” about these trees.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: print

Morning, Riverwalk

East Madison Street

Bare Trees, Wall of Leaves

Sierra Aspen Groves, Autumn

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