Tag Archives: sky

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Desert Sky, Negit Island

September 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mono Lake and dark Negit Island beneath a vast and cloud-filled summer sky

Mono Lake still seems like a somewhat mysterious place to me. Although I’m familiar with parts of it, having gone by and to it for many years on Sierra trips and having photographed there many times, I find it hard to quite get my mind around it in the same way that I can with many other places. There are probably several factors that contribute to this. First, it is obviously an absolutely huge place. While I can see the far side of the lake and the mountains beyond, they are a great distance away, as I’ve realized when traveling just part way around it – so I have looked at much of it but I have not directly experienced that much of it close up. Second, we feel that we know the chief features of this lake very well – they are, I suppose, the lowering water level of this close-off basin lake, its tremendous size, the mineral-filled water, and the famous tufa formations. But a bit more time, even only that time that I’ve spent there that is mostly secondary to “Sierra time,” and it starts to be clear that these things are not the whole story.

Some years ago, when photographing the tufas around dawn, mostly when almost no one else was around, I began to catch on to the fact that things like the sounds of flocks of birds, the immense distances on land and – especially – in the huge sky, the wind, and the deep quiet of the place have more to do with its character than the tufas. Often when I stop there now I do not go to the tufas at all, instead perhaps expanding my knowledge of other areas of the lake and surrounding country. This photograph was made from above the lake, in a location where I could look slightly down on the water, which better shows its expanse, and on the dark shape of volcanic Negit Island. But I chose to include them primarily not for their own value but rather to anchor that vast sky with its building afternoon clouds.

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: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Urban/Street

Trance Entrance

September 1, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A sign with multiple potential meanings, Pike Place Market

There are so many possible bad puns that could be made about the sign in this photograph, especially considering the city in which it was made and other things that were going on in town at that time. I’ll refrain.

On a free day during a recent trip to Seattle we decided to wander around downtown Seattle and do mostly street photography. We started out near Pike Place Market, where there are abundant opportunities to find not only the coffee and food we were seeking, but also lots of interesting “Seattlish” photographic opportunities. As we walked past an entrancing entrance to the Market, I looked up to see some wildly colorful flowers (not that you can tell here!) growing along the edge of the roof and partially hanging over the sign.

Photographs: England

London Sunset

August 30, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Sunset over London, England

We had walked across to the south side of the Thames River earlier on this afternoon – I think it was the day that we visited the Tate Museum, which is located near the south end of the Millennium Bridge. We had been in this area earlier on the trip when we saw “A Midsummer Nights Dream” at the Old Globe Theater, and I had wanted to come back in the evening and try to time it so that I could be along the river during the golden hour and perhaps into the early evening. Sure enough, when we were ready to start out walk back across the bridge to where we would catch the Underground back to our hotel the light was just starting to get interesting. In this case, “interesting” included not only the normal golden hour light show but also the somewhat thick and humid atmosphere found here.

My main thoughts were to photograph the skyline to the north and south of the bridge, and to continue shooting as the evening lights began to come on. But when I saw this sun in the hazy sky I put on a long lens that did what I would do in the Sierra Nevada back home – I made a sunset photograph! However, the landscape in this image is distinctly British and distinctly London, with the most obvious feature being the BT Tower at the left.

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

Dusk, Earth-Shadow, Oaks and Grass

August 29, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The earth’s dusk earth shadow rises behind the folds of an oak and grass-covered Sierra Nevada foothill ridge on a late-summer evening

We had been in Mariposa, along the road heading towards Yosemite Valley, to meet up with friends and do various other fun things. As is often the case, at one point the conversation turned toward the photographic possibilities for later in the day. As the horrendous “Rim” fire was burning a few ridges over along the boundaries of the park, one thought was to find a high viewpoint and try to photograph the huge smoke clouds and the light from the flames during the dusk hours. A suggestion was offered by a person who knows the area concerning a gravel back-road to the top of an area ridge from which a good view might be obtained, so we decided to give that a try. It was a beautiful early evening – no smoke here – as we drove through oak and grass-covered hills below Mariposa to pick up this route and then ascended toward the ridge to turn off on the gravel road. From the junction we could see columns of smoke from burning forest to our north, but there was also a pretty clear “No Trespassing” sign posted along the road… so we decided that we should double-check our directions before risking a citation, and we headed back down the mountain.

The alternative plan had been to simply photograph the beautiful foothills themselves as the day came to an end. In this area there are many beautiful valleys of rolling hills covered with dry grassland and oak forests that sometimes thin to individual trees. We headed along a little back road and soon arrived at our main route shortly before the last sunlight was about to fade. Driving as we looked, we finally stopped at a turnout right after the sun had dropped below the horizon, where we could see the boundary between the last pink color in the sky and the rising blue line of the earth’s shadow. I used a long lens to make a small number of exposures shooting across the hillside patterns towards an oak-topped ridge with the dusk sky beyond.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sky

Desert Sky, Negit Island

Trance Entrance

London Sunset

Dusk, Earth-Shadow, Oaks and Grass

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