Tag Archives: shadow

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

Two Oaks, Morning Sun

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Two Oaks, Morning Sun
Two Oaks, Morning Sun

Two Oaks, Morning Sun. Calero Hills, California. April 30, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The springtime morning sun shines through a pair of oak trees in the Calero Hills south of San Jose, California.

On the final day of April and for the first time this season, I found to go for a hike at my favorite local park, a place where I have walked just about every available trail (and invented a few routes of my own) and photographed for a number of years. The park would not seem like anything all that special by comparison to some of the other places I visit, but it is close and I’ve gotten to know it in a way that makes it more special. The place is called the Calero County Park, part of the Santa Clara County Parks system.

The entrance to the park is in a broad valley that is largely occupied by stables. (Or, used to be – it looks like the stables must have closed since last season.) Rising from this valley are the typical grass-covered hills of central and northern California, with oaks and other trees scattered around and, in places, thicker trees and brush. At this time of year, the hills turn what I call “impossibly green” – and if you have seen them on a late-winter or early spring morning you know what I mean.

I started this hike a bit after dawn, so the golden hour light was more or less gone. I had a general idea of photographing some wildflowers (which didn’t happen – it was too windy) and some oak trees that grow alone or in small groups on the grass-covered hills. I passed a small lake – where a single egret often hangs out, but not on this morning – and topped a rise and descended into a small valley from which I have made quite a few photographs of oaks. It didn’t look too promising at first, but at the far end of this area I noticed that a pair of trees were still obscuring the sun and that I might be able to shoot straight into the sun with the trees blocking its disk, and get a photograph including the tree shadows on the hillside grasses.

This turned out to be another of those all-too-common ephemeral photographs in that the sun was starting to rise above the top branches of the tree and would soon be “out in the open,” making it much too bright for what I had in mind. So I worked quickly to set up tripod and camera and select a lens, then frame a composition, focus, and make a series of exposures that might be needed to deal with the huge dynamic range between direct sun and backlit tree trunks. By the time I had everything set up and was ready to shoot the sun had already risen above the upper branches, so I ended up looking for a slightly better shadow and putting the tripod down very low – and this gave me must enough time to make the series of exposures I figured I would need.

In the end, I got lucky. One single shot somehow managed to not blow the sun out too badly yet hold enough detail in the grass that a bit of work in post could bring it back. With all of the potential for lens flare – which I had to some extent in every shot – this one only had two small bits of it, and they were easily dealt with.

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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.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Laundry, Fire Escape, Chinatown

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Laundry, Fire Escape, Chinatown
Laundry, Fire Escape, Chinatown

Laundry, Fire Escape, Chinatown. San Francisco, California. July 12, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Laundry is hung to dry on fire escape above the streets of Chinatown, San Francisco.

This is a photography from one of my early morning photo-walks in San Francisco last summer. I take the train to the City very early in the morning and then walk. A lot. On this morning I passed through Chinatown on my way to the North Beach area fairly early in the morning – well before the tourist crowds showed up. A few blocks from the main tourist area it is a different world with markets opening up, deliveries being made, and busy people everywhere. I was working in more or less traditional street photographer style – to the extent that someone armed with a DSLR can do that ! – and shooting with just a 50mm prime lens on the camera and trying to work quickly as images presented themselves.

I imagine that many people who pass through here may easily be so focused on the activity at the street level that they might not look up. It often strikes me as surprising that in areas where so much is going on at street level – many people, colorful shop fronts, lots of action – the fronts of buildings right above present a completely different appearance. The first thing that caught my attention here was the laundry festooning the fire escape landings. But I also like the geometry of dark landings, ladders, and pipes against the lighter stucco wall, and the wonderful light coming through the morning haze from upper right and casting the lined shadows across the walls of the building.

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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.

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

Ship Yard Structures, Artificial Light and Moonlit Fog

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Ship Yard Structures, Artificial Light and Moonlit Fog
Ship Yard Structures, Artificial Light and Moonlit Fog

Ship Yard Structures, Artificial Light and Moonlit Fog. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California. April 16, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The light of the full moon illuminates fast-moving fog clouds above Mare Island Naval Ship Yard structures lit by artificial lighting.

Since I haven’t posted photographs of these structures for a while, I’ll share a bit of explanation. The location is the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, across the water from Vallejo, California. Mare Island is a decommissioned ship yard whose history goes way back into the 1800s, when it was the largest naval ship yard on the west coast. There is a ton of history to the place that I only know vaguely, but it was, among other place, the ship yard where a number of nuclear submarines were produced. (That and certain other dangerous residues are also part of the legacy of the place, unfortunately.) The ship yard has not been active since the 1990s, with the exception of some current work to dismantle a ship from the “ghost fleet” parked near the Carquinez Bridge.

The very old buildings and the remnants of some quite large industrial facilities draw night photographers from around the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. (On my recent visit there were three groups photographing the place, including one from Sacramento.) There are almost endless subjects for night photography, ranging from very old to very new buildings, interesting structures like those in this photograph, old residences, and the general clutter found in any industrial area. All of it is lit by a varied array of lights including just about anything you can imagine: the full moon, light from nearby Vallejo, neon, fluorescent, tungsten, sodium vapor and probably other types of light.

In this photograph, huge overhead structures are lit by garish artificial light, while the overhead clouds are lit by the full moon. If I understand correctly, the structures supported huge cranes on tracks, and were used to move very heavy materials to the waterfront for installation in ships. They haven’t been used in a long time, and they are deteriorating in a way that is fascinating to photographers!

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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.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise

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Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise
Mesquite Flat Dunes, Sunrise

Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise. Death Valley National Park, California. March 31, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light striking minor dunes on Mesquite Flat with Cottonwood Mountains wash and the Last Chance Range in the distance, Death Valley National Park.

These dunes are not too far from the main Mesquite Dunes near Stovepipe Wells – they are a bit further east from the better known tallest section of the dunes. The areas of lower dunes provide some very interesting shapes and textures on a smaller scale in some ways that those of the larger dunes. I photographed these with a long lens, shooting from a rise, at a point in time very shortly after the first morning light had struck the sand. The background hills, part of a very large alluvial fan at the base of the Cottonwood Mountains, were in the shadow of a cloud.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter (follow me) | Facebook (“Like” my page) | LinkedIn | Email
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.