Tag Archives: shade

Front Porch with Flower Pots

Front Porch with Flower Pots
Front Porch with Flower Pots

Front Porch with Flower Pots. San Jose, California. January 1, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The front porch of an old suburban home with a row of flower pots and a garden hose.

Switching gears more than a bit from the recent Big Sur photographs, here comes a series of urban landscapes shot on a New Years Day walk not far from my home. I shot these in old-school style, wandering around carrying only a full-frame body with a 50mm prime. (OK, I don’t have a Leica, but this comes close enough for me.) I’m not really a big fan of the one-lens approach, but I do find it to be a fun diversion sometimes, partly because it makes me look at photographic subjects a bit differently and partly because it makes for a much smaller and lighter kit.

I’m not quite certain what caught my attention about this house, though several things might have contributed. You cannot see it from the photograph, but this one residence sits on a very busy four-lane thoroughfare among a bunch of businesses – that may have been one thing that drew me to it. The color caught my eye as well, as did the row of flower pots on the porch and the very bright green of the hose. I also like the overall geometry of the scene.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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keywords: front, porch, flower, pots, clay, green brown, red, pink, green, home, urban, house, door, screen, window, frame, pink, apricot, siding, gas, meter, hose, cement, concrete, sidewalk, worn, mailbox, street, downtown, san jose, california, usa, stucco, shade, blinds, curtain, reflection, stock/font>

Backlit Forest and Shaded Cliff

Backlit Forest and Shaded Cliff

Backlit Forest and Shaded Cliff. Yosemite Valley, California. November 1, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Backlit forest and shaded cliff face in Yosemite Valley, California.

This is another midday photograph from Yosemite Valley, something that seems to be a bit more possible in the autumn and winter seasons when the sun never gets too high in the sky, and it is possible to find shadowed sections of the surrounding cliffs as background to the interesting lighting on the trees. Here a few trees with autumn colors are framed by backlit and almost perfectly “Christmas tree shaped” trees and backed by a dark and shaded portion of the wall along the south side of the Valley.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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keywords: yosemite, national, park, valley, sierra, nevada, mountain, range, autumn, fall, season, scenic, travel, nature, landscape, california, cliff, face, rock, meadow, grass, brown, golden, forest, tree, backlit, light, yellow, pine, shade, shadow, stock

Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit

Aspen Leaves in Transition - Near Conway Summit
Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit

Aspen Leaves in Transition – Near Conway Summit. Sierra Nevada, California. September 27, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen leaves in transition from green to fall hues in the shade of a grove above Conway Summit, Sierra Nevada, California.

This is another of my close-up aspen detail photographs from my one-hour or so shoot in the eastern Sierra near Conway Summit on the last Sunday of September. I took a quick detour to this part of the “east side” after completing a short photographic backpack trip to Cathedral Lakes that weekend.

I’ve photographed this grove before, so I stop every season and see what I can find. This time I think I arrived a few days earlier than usual in the color transition. There were still a lot more leaves on trees in the grove than I’ve seen in the past and a nearby grove was still completely green. (This grove is among the first you encounter as you drive up the road from Highway 395/Conway Summit toward Virginia Lake, right by a dirt road turnoff on the left side.)

As I walked into the lower edge of the grove, I discovered that among leaves that were for the most part either green or yellow, there were a few here that had a wider range of colors – some residual green, yellow, gold, orange, and even verging on red. So, in addition to shooting the larger view of the grove, I decided to use a long lens and work on a few close shots of the leaves that most caught my attention.


G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

Aspen Grove Near Conway Summit

Aspen Grove Near Conway Summit

Aspen Grove Near Conway Summit. Sierra Nevada, California. September 27, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Newly fallen leaves litter the ground among softly lit trunks of aspen trees in a grove near Conway Summit in the eastern Sierra Nevada, California.

During my one hour (!) of fall aspen photography in the eastern Sierra on Sunday, I spent most of the time in one small grove of trees up the road to Virginia Lake from highway 395 at Conway Summit just north of Lee Vining. If you leave 395 and head up the road to Virginia Lakes, this is the first grove you encounter on your left – not far up the road and at a point where a small dirt road heads off from the main paved road.

I’ve photographed this grove before, but frequently I’ve arrived a bit after the peak. If anything, on this visit I was possibly a few days early. There were still a good number of green leaves in the grove, and across the road another large grove was completely green. However, here there were some great colors ranging from green to red and orange and yellow. I wandered up the hill through the grove and came to this spot where the ground was relatively clear but partially littered with fallen leaves, and a clear view of the many interesting shapes of the tree trunks was available.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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