Tag Archives: san jose

Photographs: Music & Musicians, Photographs: People

Conductor Guillermo Figueroa

March 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Conductor Guillermo Figueroa directing a rehearsal of the Symphony Silicon Valley

This is one of the photographs from my three-year project photographing professional classical musicians. As part of the project, which is now in its second year, I have been “embedded” with the Symphony Silicon Valley (the descendent of the former San Jose Symphony). Most of my photography has been during rehearsals, when I can work fairly freely backstage, photographing musicians in ways that they are not usually seen. Most people have a limited familiarity with classical musicians, mostly seeing them from a distance in performances when they are formally attired. One of the goals of the project is to show aspects of their lives and work that are not seen as often – the rehearsals, what goes on backstage, even what they do between rehearsals and concerts.

There is a lot of photograph in this world! I’m fortunate not only to have the cooperation of this wonderful group of musicians (thanks SSV people!) but to be personally very familiar with this world. My training is in the field of music. At one time I played professionally, and at another point I worked as an orchestra stage manager. So I have developed some sensitivity to music and musicians that might be difficult for other photographers to achieve. Many interesting things happen so quickly that you might not even see them if you did not know to look. The work of the conductor is but one example. From instant to instant the conductor’s facial expression changes, sometimes radically, to both respond to and anticipate changes in the music. The position and motion of the hands and, for that matter, the whole body, conveys important but fleeting cues to musicians. I studied conducting a bit at one time, but I think I have learned more about it in the past two years by closely watching and becoming aware of the visual elements of the conductor’s work. Layered on top of that is the basic photographic need to be constantly aware of light, both in the technical and expressive sense, and how to place the subject in a context that “works” visually. This is a very different sort of work that photographing landscapes, but it is equally challenging and rewarding!

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: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows

August 26, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late winter shadows fall across a suburban scene composed of a stucco wall, pipes, and a window

This is the second of two “walking around” photographs made in my neighborhood while wandering around with a camera and a couple of lenses. These walks are exercises in seeing, in several ways: When I carry the camera I pay a lot more attention to things around me that I would otherwise simply not see at all, and the process of looking and seeing photographs in places that are so mundane that I might regularly walk past them helps “tune up” my seeing skills.

As I often do, on this walk I was paying a lot of attention to shadows falling across the walls of buildings. As I write in my last photo post, once I started noticing the shadows, which are everywhere in this area, I began to see the buildings differently. For example, here is a building that I might otherwise have simply thought of as a tan building. But now it is a building with branches “painted” over almost its entire surface. And in this one, the branch shadows converge on the mundane little collection of faucets and wires and what-not at the lower left, then spread and open up to surround the white window frame above and to the right.

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Red Bench, Ball, and Shadows

June 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A weathered red bench next to a suburban lawn and in front of a home with tree shadows

This probably seems like a different sort of photograph from me, but I actually have a thread of images along these lines that goes back quite a ways. They belong to what I think of as “wandering about my neighborhood” photographs, which I make on occasional walks in an extended version of my neighborhood – literally stepping out the front door and then walking. These walks encourage me to see things that I would otherwise miss, both in the general photographic sense of noticing things more when I have a camera in hand and in the more specific sense of noticing things that I otherwise simply pass by in my neighborhood.

I distinctly recall one of the first times I did this. I “saw” two things that I simply had never noticed before, even though I’ve lived in this neighborhood for years. First, in a nearby small downtown area there are buildings with more than one level – and it wasn’t until that first walk that I actually noticed the details of the second stories of these buildings. The second thing I noticed were shadows of trees. It turns out – no surprise now that I think about it – that they are everywhere. It was as if every building had trunks and branches and foliage painted on its walls. This photograph includes these shadows. It also has some other compositional elements that interest me – I’ll leave it to viewers to think about them – and there is something interesting to me about that old, weathered bench and the ball parked next to the column on the patio at the top of the concrete stairs.

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

Calero Oaks, Fog

April 27, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

This is an older photograph that I sort of “rediscovered” while going through older files recently. It was due for a bit of additional work, reformatting to fit my current preferred 4:3 print ratio, and the updated web border and text that you see in the online versions of my photographs. (And, to answer the question that comes up from time to time, my fine art prints do not include the text found in the online photographs!)

Although I no longer visit there quite as often, this area became a favorite location of mine a few years ago, especially during the winter months when morning fog frequently burns off and reveals the newly-green winter landscape of the California grassland and oak forests. The photograph was made on one of these very mornings, as I had hiked the familiar trail along the top of this ridge, to find myself on the border between fog in the valleys and clearing on the ridge, with the edge of the fog drifting through these trees and the sun backlighting this misty atmosphere.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: san jose

Conductor Guillermo Figueroa

Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows

Red Bench, Ball, and Shadows

Calero Oaks, Fog

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