Tag Archives: reflections

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Curving Branch, Rippled Water

March 10, 2015 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

A curved branch extends above the rippled surface of a wetland pond reflecting morning sunlight and thinning clouds

This is a very simple photograph — though maybe not quite as simple as it seems — but one that needed a very specific set of conditions. The more I look at the shape of the branch the more the boundary between the actual branch and its reflection blurs, and the more similarities I see between the twisting shapes of the branch itself and the warped version of the twisting form seen in the reflection. I also like the way that its rough and mostly black shape contrasts with the soft curves and colors of the water.

The water is very shallow, part of a seasonally flooded wetland area in the Central Valley. Much of the flooded wetland is full of plants and grasses and other distractions, but here I found a single standing branch against a fairly large background uninterrupted by other branches or plants. The water was relatively still on this morning, though later the wind rose and broke up these smooth ripples. The morning tule fog had almost completely dissipated, leaving the sky a soft blue color interspersed with a few scattered clouds — and those colors and patterns are abstracted here in the surface of the water.

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

Lake, Rocky Shoreline

October 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light and reflections of the rocky shoreline of a subalpine lake surrounded by forest, Yosemite National Park

At first glance a subalpine lake may look much like many other subalpine lakes. And, in fact, these lakes do tend to share some of the same sorts of features if they are in the same terrain and at the same elevation. Along the shoreline trees may march right down to the water’s edge, boulders may interrupt the shoreline and extend into the lake, there may be islands, it is often flat and marshy near the outlet stream, and higher slopes will often rise above the lake.

However, spend time at any such lake and it inevitably begins to reveal its own unique personality. Spend a lot of time at one lake — a period of at least a few days — and things that you overlooked at first become more obvious and may even come to be part of what defines the lake’s character. As soon as we arrived at this lake we all gravitated to the west shore in the early morning, from which we could photograph back across the lake and into the morning light, letting it fringe nearer trees against the backdrop of the shadowed trees on the other side. But further exploration — otherwise known as “wandering slowly around the lake many times” — began to reveal all sorts of possible alignments and juxtapositions. Here the morning light casts shadow patterns beneath the surface of the reflection water, and the near and far rocky areas seem to connect across the lake.

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Textures and Reflections

October 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Detail of a Chicago riverfront building with distorted window reflections

As is the case with a number of the Chicago photographs that I made during our August 2014 visit to the Windy City, this one was made from a boat on the Chicago River. We rarely do “tourist things” when we visit cities, usually preferring to look for more interesting stuff, but everyone we know who had been there recommended the Chicago architecture boat tours, so we gave in and took one. I have to say that it was worth it — the tour combines an intense overview of a lot of downtown Chicago architecture, a lot of background information on the structures and the development of the city, and a unique view that isn’t really available in any other way.

There is almost too much to see on the tour, since Chicago’s downtown is dense with interesting features large and small, and the boats don’t pause to let you gawk! So I photographed a lot, trying to vary my focus between the large and impressive downtown buildings and smaller details down closer to the river. This photograph falls into that second category, and is “about” the shapes and textures of the bit of a more modern building and the very deformed reflections in its windows.

Photographs: England, Photographs: Night

River Thames Reflections, Night

August 4, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Nighttime lights from the Southwark Bridge reflect on the surface of London’s River Thames.

As we walked back across the Millennium Bridge toward the north bank of the River Thames in the evening light, I saw many colorful lights on bridges, boats, and buildings that were reflected in the surface of the river and which stood out against the somewhat hazy blue hour atmosphere. This bridge provides a great location for photographing the reflections since it is, obviously, right above the water and because it is easy to align reflections with various other elements by moving back and forth across the bridge. In this photograph most of the interesting reflections are coming from the Southwark Bridge, with the white lights on the Tower Bridge just visible further along the river.

On a technical note, I relied on a very different sort of photographic gear on this trip. Since our plan was to keep our luggage down to carry-on size – for a three-week trip to three countries – we decided to take some radical steps to downsize the amount of camera equipment we would carry. I normally shoot a full frame DSLR and typically carry a very large tripod and multiple (sometimes many!) large lenses. My normal load of camera gear alone, at least for car-based shooting, would exceed the carry-limits that we would deal with on our international flights – and would also weigh me down more than I wanted during a trip that would include a lot of walking. So for this trip I left my Big Gear at home and instead carried a Fujifilm X-E!, a small cropped sensor mirrorless camera, and only three lenses: a 14mm prime, a 35mm prime, and a 55-200mm zoom. All of this fit in a small messenger bag with room left over for my (small) laptop and lots of other necessities. I bring this up because this photograph was shot handheld with this camera, using the 35mm prime – in a situation and of a subject where I would normally assume that a tripod was necessary. (I’ll be writing more about the experience with this alternate gear soon at my blog.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: reflections

Curving Branch, Rippled Water

Lake, Rocky Shoreline

Textures and Reflections

River Thames Reflections, Night

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