Tag Archives: stock

Photographs: England, Photographs: People, Photographs: Urban/Street

London Street Market

August 17, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A London street market near closing time.

This is another photograph made in the narrow streets along the south side of the Thames river roughly in the area of the Millennium and Southwark Bridges, where we found ourselves with some time to kill late one afternoon. As we walked around with no firm plan in mind we came to a location where a street market was just closing, and the many vendors were making their final sales of the day and starting to close up shop.

Visually this was an absolutely compelling place to photograph, though I’m not at all sure I was able to do it justice – and I would go back given the chance. The many stalls selling almost anything you can imagine created their own interest; the place was packed with people shopping or just walking through on their way to some other place. And being under a bridge and in places in old buildings with lots of glass above, the light was truly wonderful. I spent perhaps a half hour walking through the area, shooting like crazy, and I especially liked the spots like this one where I could position myself in shadow and shoot directly toward the late afternoon light.

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.

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: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Mono Lake Sky

August 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon thunderstorms develop over the eastern Sierra Nevada and Mono Lake

I think that many people are initially drawn to Mono Lake by the famous and often photographed tufa tower formations, and I have certainly sought out and photographed that subject quite a few times. But the more I go there the less I’m interested primarily in the tufas, and the more I find myself drawn to and thinking about other things. These include the immense space and deep quite surrounding the lake, broken by the cries of birds, especially when you visit at the quietest time around dawn. I also am drawn to the sky above this lake – which is often, frankly, rather barren, but when filled with the right kind of clouds can almost be the subject itself.

But only almost, so in this photograph I decided to include a thin strip of the reflecting water of the lake along with the darker formation of Black Point and the hills rising beyond in order to anchor that sky to something solid. This was one of those afternoons when thunder storms were trying to develop, but couldn’t quite build sufficiently before sundown. But this still left some very spectacular clouds, especially where updrafts pushed their tops high into the light. I suppose that there are several reasons that I chose to make this a black and white photograph, but one very practical reason was that the lower reaches of the atmosphere were a bit brown from a nearby wildfire, and I could better adapt to that in monochrome.

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

Fisherman, Ellery Lake, Sierra Crest

August 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone fisherman casts into Ellery Lake beneath ridges rising through haze toward the Sierra Nevada crest

This photograph includes a subject that I’ve stopped and looked at many time, thinking there must be a photograph in it somewhere – and even trying to photograph it a few times – but never quite figuring out how to see it. Ironically, it was the wildfire haze and smoke that made it work for me this time, as that haze muted some of the over-abundance of fine detail that I think can distract from the larger form in this scene, and which also muted the bright reflections on the water which can otherwise be hard to manage.

I thought of this as monochrome image when I made it. (I don’t always know that at the time of exposure, but with digital we have the luxury of making that decision later if necessary.) My first thought was to make it a “natural” landscape, but I noticed that a fisherman had appeared along the left end of the foreground peninsula. Often my first reaction to the appearance of a person in my landscapes is to wait for the person to move. But I have learned that sometimes a very small figure in the landscape can change the image in ways that seem oddly out of proportion to the size of the figure. Here, especially in a larger print, the little figure against the background of the shining water changes everything, I think. Place the tip of your finger over that person to cover him, and see if you see what I mean. I did also continue to make a few more exposures after he left, but I like this one the best.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Grazing Deer, Ragged Peak

August 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

A group of deer graze in Tuolumne Meadows near sunset beneath the summit of distant Ragged Peak

Perhaps I’ve simply missed this in the past, but on this early August trip to the Tuolumne Meadows area I saw a herd of deer grazing in the meadow in the evening that was larger than any I have encountered before. I’ve often seen small groups of perhaps a half-dozen or so there, but this group had at least two dozen individuals on the two evenings I was there. Many were bucks with antlers, but there were also some very young and very frisky critters among them, including one who seemed to be the ringleader of periodic high-speed races back and forth across the meadow. While waiting for interesting light for photographing other subjects (and that light is just beginning to appear on the dome behind the meadow) I spent some time with the long lens photographing them.

There are, of course, quite a few ways to photograph wildlife, ranging from what amount to intimate and close-up portraits to photographs that show the animals in their landscape – with the latter verging on “landscape with animals,” a different thing than much wildlife photography. I like doing both, but here I was thinking a lot more about photographing the animals in their world. This affected my approach in a couple of perhaps obvious ways. First, while I could have gotten quite a bit closer with the long lens I was using, I hung back so that I could include more than one deer in the frame, include more of the surrounding landscape, and not intrude to closely on the deer. Second, as soon as I had clicked of a first “insurance shot” of the animals, I stopped and looked at the landscape in order to find things that I could align with the deer. In this case, I was able to move some distance to one side and get a group to line up with the low dome (which, lucky for me, got hit with a bit of soft evening sunlight at the right moment!) and the distant ridge holding Ragged Peak, an area that I know quite well from many pack trips into nearby areas.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: stock

London Street Market

Mono Lake Sky

Fisherman, Ellery Lake, Sierra Crest

Grazing Deer, Ragged Peak

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