Tag Archives: reflection

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New England

Lake and Sky, New Hampshire

Image December 1, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

You may have seen a different version of this scene rendered in black and white — I posted it not long after our return from photographing New England fall color this year. During the first days of our visit we photographed in the iconic Kancamagus Highway region between Concord and Lincoln — and it was, as predicted, quite spectacular… and quite crowded. But then we explored a bit more widely, and we stopped to photograph this lake on a long loop that took us much farther north in New Hampshire.

There’s one other semi-notably thing about this photograph — I made it on an iPhone 14. I’m not giving up my Big Boy Cameras any time soon, but on this trip I played around with using the iPhone to capture some subjects — quick panoramas, record shots, photographs after dark. In a few cases, in addition to setting up the big camera and tripod, I put the iPhone in raw-capture mode and made a few photographs just to see what it could do. The answer? Quite a bit!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: New England

Lake, Clouds, Floating Leaves

Image October 17, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This photograph could probably generate a chapter of commentary, but I’ll keep to the traditional two paragraphs. Recently I was asked about making black and white photographs of autumn “color,” and I said that I do so on occasion, at least in part just to push myself to consider how it can be done — what, besides the color, can suggest the feelings of autumn? In addition, this photograph is also the result of the “wandering around” that I mentioned in the previous post — getting away from the obvious places, even when visiting unfamiliar locations. There’s also something technically different about this photograph, though I think I’ll leave that as a mystery. I’ll bet no one figures out what I’m referring to…

A few days into our October New England visit we left the iconic Kancamagus Parkway area behind and headed north and east on, more or less, a “random ride.” This took us away from the tall ridges of the White Mountains, and into different landscapes featuring lower hills, valleys, and more rivers, creeks, and lakes. Near the northern-most point of our route the roadway crossed a quiet lake. We stopped to make photographs of the leaves littering its surface and the reflections of beautiful clouds.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Free Beans

Image October 9, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A very worn, largely illegible, and graffiti-covered sign on a Manhattan business.

We don’t know if they are good beans, but at least they are free, or so we are led to believe. This window, made opaque, was under scaffolding that covered a sidewalk next to the building in Manhattan. Such scaffolding seems ubiquitous to me. I can’t vouch for this, but I was told by someone who should know about such things that the scaffolding contractors like to leave the stuff up since it is less expensive than moving it and warehousing it!

This kind of forgotten urban detritus fascinates me. At some point in the past, someone must have put some thought into the signage, determining which colors to use, what size fonts to use for different text, and aligning those yellow lines that divide it into sections. But neglect, weather, and graffiti have done their work, and today it is hard to even figure out what the sign is about.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Reflection Deception

Image September 26, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The glass surface of a New York building reflects and distorts its surroundings.

Scenes like this are, of course, common in big urban centers that are filled with tall, modern buildings. This one comes from Manhattan. One striking difference between many new buildings and those from a much earlier era is that today the surfaces are often nearly 100% windows and, as such, the buildings are extremely reflective. A few years ago it occurred to me how odd it is that what we see when we look at these buildings today is mostly not the buildings at all. The building is essentially invisible beyond the slender outlines of frames between windows. The “surface” we see is composed of other things — sky, clouds, other buildings — that are distorted by the qualities of the reflective surface. (I have an idea for a photo project: Remove all of the reflective surfaces from images of these buildings, leaving only the minimal structural elements that are actually visible.)

These buildings are one reason that I often refer to these places and photographs of them as “urban landscapes. There is a continuum in landscape photography. At one end lies subjects that are entirely “natural” — or at least seem to be so. Somewhere in between we enter the realm of historic landscape paintings, in which it was common to include the human presence. Continue along that trajectory far enough, and it is possible to see cities as being just a different sort of landscape, and that way of seeing leads to different ways of photographing them.