Tag Archives: san jose

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

White Globe Lily, Spring Green

Image April 29, 2019 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Chinese Lantern, Spring Green — A solitary white globe lily blossom against a background of spring green

A solitary white globe lily blossom against a background of spring green.

As much as I love traveling to more distant and even exotic locations to make photographs, I often photograph right in my (more or less) back yard. If you follow me, you know that I photograph urban and industrial subjects all around the San Francisco Bay Area, but I also photograph some very nearby natural areas. This photograph, and a few others that will follow before long, was made in a place I’ve been visiting for decades, and it is only a very short drive from my home.

I know the spot where I photographed this flower very well. In fact, every spring I go to this little canyon to renew my acquaintance with a group of spring wildflowers found there. At this point, I know exactly what flowers I’ll find around precisely which bend in the trail. One of my favorites here is the white globe lily flower, a lovely and subtly-colored bulbous wildflower that grows at the end of slender graceful shoots. I didn’t see any the first time I visited this season, but on this visit I found a few blossoms and even more bud that should open a week or so later

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Food Truck

July 7, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The food truck vendor behind dark blue glass

There is a bit of a strange story behind this photograph and a few others I made on the same evening. I was at a brewery that isn’t too far from where I live — we had been meaning to visit the place for some time, but when we heard there would be a Fujifilm camera demo event with loaners we decided to go. The Fujifilm representative showed up with a table full of goodies, and they let us check them out for about 15 minutes at a time.

I decided to go with something basic and try the X100f, the new Fujifilm rangefinder style camera. The photographic subjects were a bit limited. There were a couple of models hired to come in for the event, but that’s not really my thing. But the street photography presence of a beaten up old food truck was irresistible.

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

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brewery Window

June 23, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A window at Hapa’s Brewery in San Jose, California

Today’s photograph is the result of something other than endeavoring to go out and make photographs, but it might also be evidence that some kind of photograph can be made almost anywhere at almost any time. We heard there was an event hosted by Fujifilm at a relatively new brewery not too far from where we live. We have been meaning to visit this place for months without ever quite managing to go, but the prospect of getting to play with a range of Fujifilm camera equipment and try out a new brewery was enough to get us to go.

The premise of the event was loaning various Fujifilm cameras and lenses to interested folks for fifteen minutes at a time. I already really on a Fujifilm system for my street and travel photography, but I thought it would be fun to play with their tiny rangefinder X100F, a small fixed-lens camera in the street photography tradition. I didn’t have a lot of exotic subjects to work with — basically a brewery full (mostly) of people trying out cameras! This photograph had two goals. The mundane one was testing the bokeh of the fixed lens on this small camera. The aesthetic angle was placing the window frame in such a way that it divided the background into four independent images rectangles that are quite different from one another.

Photographs: Urban/Street

Metal Wall

June 22, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A metal wall leads away toward a person standing in a doorway

This certainly qualifies as an opportunistic photograph. We had heard that a local brewery was going to host a Fujifilm “drink and click” demo this evening. We’ve been wanting to try the place out, and the added attraction of being able to play with a whole bunch of Fujifilm cameras and lenses clinched the deal. A local camera store collaborated with Fujifilm to show up with a bunch of their x-trans camera bodies and good cross-section of their lenses. Since I already have the Fujifilm XPro2 camera, I was mostly interested in trying out lenses and the X100f rangefinder camera.

So I had the X100f for about 15 minutes, mostly inside the brewery but also just outside. I figured out the camera pretty quickly and then just made a bunch of handheld photographs, trying a range of techniques and settings to get a feel for the camera. For this image I was interested in seeing how the fixed 23mm f/2 would do with a narrow focus plane (at f/2) and what the resulting bokeh would look like. I think the camera passed the test pretty well.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: san jose

White Globe Lily, Spring Green

Food Truck

Brewery Window

Metal Wall

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