Tag Archives: silhouette

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Bus Stop, San Francisco

June 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A person sits at a bus stop in downtown San Francisco, California.

I made this photograph a year ago during one of my summer walks through downtown San Francisco. These walks have become a sort of tradition for me during this time of the year – I take the train into The City, arriving very early, and then head out on foot to photograph various areas, most of which I’ve visited a number of times. I prowl for several different sorts of subjects – the early morning light above the waterfront, people, bits of color and shape, and “architectural landscapes.”

Things can evolve very quickly in this urban environment. As I recall, the first thing that caught my attention here was the solitary figure on the bench, obscured by the semi-transparent material around the bus stop shelter, followed by the juxtapositions of yellow colors on its room and the sign across the street. The scene was incredibly busy, with people walking between me that the shelter, cars and buses passing by on the street, and people moving in and out of the frame on the other side of the street. So here, as I often do in such situations, I used what I might call the “compose and wait” approach – I found a composition around the shelter that centered the far widow and red sign in the opening… and then I waited for something interesting to appear in the right parts of the frame and for the distracting elements to disappear. I made perhaps a half-dozen or more exposures. In one, a bus passes through the frame. In another, blurred people appear in the foreground. But in this one, the person in dark clothes walked right in front of the red sign as another person emerged across the street to the left of the shelter, and no other people or vehicles interfered.

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

Trees and Evening Sky

June 10, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees silhouetted against cloud-filled evening sky, Yosemite National Park.

The last time I posted a photograph of more or less this scene, the colors were so bright that you almost needed sunglasses! The photograph was made on an evening that ultimately turned into one of the most astonishingly colorful ones I have experienced in the Sierra – and I have experienced a few! Although that evening began with what most might regard as extraordinarily unpromising light – murky haze and overcast – I had an idea that these might be just the conditions in which the sun drops below the edge of the clouds far to the west just before sunset and then lights the clouds from beneath, a situation that can suddenly turn the sky into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of colors.

Eventually that is just what happened. But this photograph was made just before that show began, or perhaps during the very first stages of it when it was not at all certain what might develop. There were high, thin clouds in the sky to the west, and they began to glow a bit with evening backlight, so I lined up this little group of trees on the granite slabs and photographed them in silhouette against the sky. A few minutes later… it was not going to be time to be making black and white photographs!

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Rock Garden, Atmospheric Haze, Morning

June 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Black and white photograph of a rock garden of sandstone towers in morning light, backed by atmospheric haze and barely visible La Salle Mountains, Arches National Park.

So far, each time I’ve thought I was hitting the end of the photographs from my early April weeklong trip to Utah, I come up with another one… and another… and another. I still have a few more waiting to be posted, but those are photographs that I had already worked up but held off posting for one reason or another. This one, however, may be the final one to actually emerge from the collection of exposures from the trip. (But I make no promises! There is one more that features some reflected light inside alcoves in sandstone that still may work.)

This photographed ended up in black and white for several reasons. I was sort of leaning that direction when I made the exposure, since the color components of the scene were both difficult to work with and a bit less than exciting. In addition, I like the way that black and white can sometimes abstract the shapes of things, perhaps taking them a few degrees further from their “real” nature. I had stopped alongside the road between the Windows Area and Wall Street as I begin my exit from Arches National Park on my last morning of shooting there. There was a lot of haze, especially when looking into the light, as this photograph does. The backlit haze is thick enough that the snow- and forest-covered La Salle Mountains, which actually fill the upper part of the frame, all almost impossible to see, and the foreground features gradually lose contrast as they progress away from the camera. However, because the light is in front of the camera and coming from just out of the right side of the frame, the edges of the rock towers gain a bit of extra definition against that hazy background.

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

Cloud Shrouded Cliffs and Snow, Yosemite Valley

May 4, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late season clouds shroud snow-covered cliffs high above Yosemite Valley, California.

Among my very favorite conditions in Yosemite Valley are those of winter or late-spring days when there is snow along the cliffs high above the Valley and clouds float along the cliff tops alternately revealing and hiding trees, cliffs, and granite spires. The story behind this photograph is, as is often the case, one of being distracted from the obvious thing by some other small thing that I could have overlooked if I hadn’t looked in the right direction at the right moment.

I was in the Yosemite Valley area for a day, primarily to shoot wildflowers in Merced Canyon below the park. Between my morning and evening shooting along the Merced, I headed up into the Valley to see what I could find. Frankly, although it is always beautiful to be in the Valley, I wasn’t seeing much of anything that inspired me to make photographs. I enjoyed my time there, but eventually decided to go to a slightly different area to see what I could find. On my way back to the Valley from that other place, I passed through Wawona Tunnel, had some extra time, and decided to at least pull out briefly at tunnel view and have a look around. The scene is always tremendous, with the astonishing Valley and all of its impossible features spread before you – but it isn’t always worth trying to turn this into a photograph. I’m spoiled enough that I don’t always even take the camera out when I stop there, and this was one of those days. I left my gear in the car and just walked to the overlook to, well, look for a minute before driving on. I have a habit of looking all around when I’m in such a place since sometimes a subject can be found that is not the primary iconic thing. So I looked around… and high above and way off to the side I saw the clouds gathering around a few of the granite spires, with an occasional beam of light shining through. Ignoring the Valley itself, I now quickly returned to my car, put a long lens on the camera, put the camera on the tripod… and from the back of my car and in the parking lot (sigh… ;-) I made a series of photographs of these fog-shrouded snowy cliffs.

I understand that this weekend a number of photographers, including quite a few that I know, will assemble in the Valley for a “photo walk.” I won’t be there, since I have another thing that I have to attend to elsewhere. So consider this photograph to be my “best wishes for a great shoot.” Oh, and it is also a personal photographic celebration of the fact that Tioga Pass will open on Monday, making the high country my home away from home for many days over the next few months.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: silhouette

Bus Stop, San Francisco

Rock Garden, Atmospheric Haze, Morning

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