Tag Archives: print

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Telescope Peak

August 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Telescope Peak, the highest point in Death Valley National Park, in the distance beyond the rugged terrain of upper Titanothere Canyon in the Amargosa Range

This one has been sitting in my queue for months now, and it is finally time to send it out with the other photographs! I made the photograph back in early April, while spending a few days in Death Valley exploring a lot of higher elevation area in the mountains on either side of the Valley itself. At one point during this visit, we ended up spending nearly an entire day high up in the Panamint range, at times doing something very unusual — photographing Death Valley wildflowers during a snowstorm!

The distant snow-covered peak in the photograph is Telescope Peak, at over 11,000′ of elevation the highest point in the Panamint range and in Death Valley National Park. While we often think of Death Valley’s reputation for heat, this peak is often covered with snow during the colder times of the year. The location from which I made this photograph is high in the mountains on the other, east side of the Valley, a very arid and rugged region that presents a different appearance than the much lower areas of the Valley itself. Here there is a landscape of dry and rugged mountains and valleys, often receding one behind the other into the distance. I stopped at this spot, where I have photographed before, and was captivated by the conduction of three peak shapes — the nearly peak at upper right, the distant summit of Telegraph Peak, and the peak-like form of the clouds above.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

N.Y. Chung Chou City, LLC

August 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Bright lights of a Manhattan Chinatown shop on a summer evening

After dinner in New York’s Chinatown district, we went out to walk a very roundabout route to the subway. This was approaching my new favorite time for doing street photography — at night! With the newest cameras (I’m using a Fujifilm X-trans mirrorless for city shooting) the high ISO performance is good enough that I can crank it up, put on a f/1.4 lens, and shoot handheld in the urban night, working with only the ambient lighting. It wasn’t quite that dark here, but you can see that it was dark enough that the lighted interior of the shop was brighter than outside.

These scenes seem, to this west coaster, part of the culture and aura of New York City. There is a lot more going on here than might meet the eye, and I won’t even try to explain all of it. The ubiquitous plastic trash bags are an obvious feature. In my native part of the world, most neighborhoods appear to be places where trash doesn’t exist, but in New York everyone seems to just accept it as a part of the urban world. There is the odd matter of the cooler in front of the store entrance, which rests of a shelf and spews a stream of water onto the sidewalk. Between the light and the green awnings, the colors are fairly bright. And, at this early hour of the evening, a pool of light from the shop spills out onto the sidewalk.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Calero Oaks and Summer Grass

August 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Oak and grass-covered summer hills extending into late summer morning haze

This is a portrait orientation version of more of less the same scene I shared in an earlier photograph from the same mid-August morning hike through a familiar, long time favorite local hiking and photography location. It is an area full of grasslands and oak-covered hills, lush and green for a few months each winter and spring, and then California gold/brown for much of the rest of the year. I have hiked these hills and this specific trail for many years, though it had been several months since my last prior visit — it was good to be “home” again!

This morning was special for a few reasons. There was a wonderful feeling of returning to “my world” following a few months away from this place and my return, only days earlier, from a lengthy trip to the east coast that included more than a week in the very urban environment of New York City. It also turned out, a bit to my surprise, that this hike would bring my annual “autumn is just around the corner” experience — that day each year when something tells me clearly that summer is beginning to wind down and that the beauties of autumn are not far away.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Little Italy, Evening

August 27, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Visitors pack closed streets though Manhattan’s Little Italy.

Walking more or less northwest from New York’s Chinatown district after dinner we ended up heading through Little Italy. As we walked on this Sunday evening we started seeing huge crowds of people and we soon figured out why. Apparently the streets through here are closed on Sunday evening, and restaurants tables spill out across the sidewalks, and people end up walking up and down the middle of the streets. The photograph is deceptive — it shows perhaps the smallest number of people that I saw here, and most of the time the streets were packed.

Originally we “planned” (to the extent that we were operating on any kind of plan!) to just walk through here, but it was so lively that we slowed down, stopping for sidewalk gelato, and I made some photographs. The colors were intensified by the diminishing late-day light, and I held my camera above my head and shot blind to get this elevated point of view. Ideally, I think this image works best as a large print, since there are so many small details to look at that aren’t easily visible in this small web version.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: print

Telescope Peak

N.Y. Chung Chou City, LLC

Calero Oaks and Summer Grass

Little Italy, Evening

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