Tag Archives: silhouette

Staten Island Ferry

August 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Details of the Staten Island Ferry in black and white.

This photograph may need a bit of explanation. Though it might be fun for you to try to parse out what you are seeing first. Go ahead. I’ll wait…

We did the cheap thing on this afternoon after walking around parts of south Manhattan – we wandered over to the Battery Park, saw a ferry approaching, figured we had just enough time for a scenic round trip, ran to the terminal, and did the free over-and-back on the Staten Island Ferry. The price is certainly right, and the ferry provides interesting views of the Brooklyn shoreline and the south end of Manhattan.

This is a photograph of… not much. The only in-focus element is the vertical metal bar near the left side of the frame. There are windows in the frame as well, and they provide several layers of reflections along with some other “stuff” from the glass itself. (The fence-like object at lower right is actually behind my camera position.) I shot this with a very large aperture to get a narrow depth of field, so everything beyond the metal column is out of focus – the sliding windows, the portion of a person at the right edge of the frame, the water and horizon, and the barely visible bit of the Verrazano bridge in the right window.

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.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

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

Granite Domes and Trees, Morning

August 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Morning light on trees and glaciated ridges, Yosemite National Park.

It is now 11:23 p.m. PDT on Friday, August 12… and I just realized a few moments ago that I neglected to schedule the posting of a new photograph today! Before I left for Yosemite on this past Wednesday I thought I had placed a photograph in the queue for automatic posting today, but apparently not. As long as I complete this post in the next half hour or so, I won’t miss posting my daily photograph!

I made this photograph early today (Friday, August 12) as the first light was striking the glaciated ridges near Olmsted Point. I had arrived early enough to climb far up on the granite slopes above the famous overlook before the sun came up – I had a plan to photograph some of the solitary trees high on these granite slabs as the first light struck them. I accomplished that, and as I began to descend from this area I decided to make a few more photographs while I was up there. Across the nearby canyon is another ridge that is topped by the glacial erratics, the solitary boulders sitting on top of the rounded ridges and just about anywhere else in this part of Yosemite. The early light was coming across from the left and striking the tops of these ridges, but it had not yet struck the huge face of Clouds Rest, seen behind them.

(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)

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

Trees and Sunset Sky, Olmsted Point

July 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees growing on granite silhouetted against a colorful sunset sky at Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.

This astonishing, magical light occurred just at and right after sunset on the evening of June 18, the day that Tioga Pass finally opened for the 2011 summer season. I earlier posted a vertical format photograph of much the same scene, though with slightly different light – the other photograph was made about a minute after this one and the conditions were changing very rapidly.

The photograph was made from the popular Olmsted Point overlook along the Tioga Pass Road (highway 120), with its well-known view of subalpine Tenaya Lake. Since I have recounted the story of this light in some detail in an earlier post, I’ll keep this description somewhat short, but here is the genera outline. Earlier in the evening I had come here to try to photograph Mount Conness with a long lens. Initially the light was very unpromising, but I observed some things that suggested the possibility of sunset light so I stuck around. Just before sunset, as the sun dropped near the horizon to the west, the light came from below to illuminate the thin, high clouds and produce an amazing color show.

To make the series of photographs of these trees I simply pivoted my tripod around from the direction it had been pointing, towards Mount Conness. The trees are somewhat sparse here since the granite domes and slabs cannot support many of them. The speed of light and color transition was remarkable. At one or more points, as the clouds picked up the sunset glow, the brightness of the light suddenly increased noticeably. The brightest color moved across the sky from east to west, and here the color was just beginning to diminish ever so slightly overhead as it continues to intensify to the west and closer to the horizon.

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

Trees in Silhouette, Olmsted Point, Sunset

June 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Trees at Olmsted Point are silhouetted against a brilliantly colorful spring sunset sky, Yosemite National Park.

I think everyone should occasionally get to post a just plain gaudy color sunset – and this is mine. While photographing Mount Conness from Olmsted Point was my primary goal on this evening, I also had some opportunities to swing the tripod around and point at other things from time to time. This is about as close as I can come to capturing the nearly hallucinogenic color of the sky as the brightest cloud illumination was centered directly overhead and beginning to move off to the west.

The color saturation was so intense that I had to under expose this by at least a stop in order to avoid blowing out the red channel and in order to retain some differentiation among the various shadings of color as they transitioned from very pink/red through orange and purple and on towards blue.

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.

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