Tag Archives: sun

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

A Tree Revealed

Image December 26, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The branches of a winter oak tree, with only a few autumn leaves remaining.

This tree stands alongside a trail that I’ve hiked for years, one that runs up a little valley in the oak-grassland hills south of the San Francisco Bay. I have hiked here in all seasons for decades, but I think winter is still my favorite on this route. On Christmas Eve Day, it was sunny and pleasantly cool, with haze muting the light a bit. I approached this tree from the other side, and didn’t see the color of the leaves until I looked back it after passing.

It might surprise people from other parts of the country, but quite a few trees around here still have their leaves, either because they never drop them or because, like this oak, they manage to hang onto them all the way into the new year. While this oak still has a few leaves, glowing in the sunlight, most of them have fallen, revealing the silhouette of the trees branching structure.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature

Levee Road, Fog, and Tree

Image December 12, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn tule fog glows in morning sun, blankets a Central Valley levee road, and obscures an old tree.

The subject here is an old Central Valley tree along a levee road on a very foggy autumn morning. You may recall that my previous photograph of a fog-obscured tree from this location was in color — thought just barely, as I wrote about in that post. Color was similarly subtle (as in “nearly absent”) in this scene, too, so I went ahead and interpreted the scene in black and white.

The quiet and moody quality of this scene, of course, comes largely from the tule fog. But that is enhanced by the way it glows in the back light from the sun, seen just above and slightly to the left of the tree. The fog is very thick here, but not very deep, and even though visibility was probably little more than 100 feet, the sunlight was able to penetrate and light up the fog.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Pond, Fog, and Sun

Image December 9, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning sun muted by tule fog, illuminates a late-autumn pond.

Continuing with the fog theme, here is another photograph from this week’s visit to the California Central Valley. Even though I scheduled this visit because I knew there was a good chance of thick fog, I was a bit surprised by how much of it I encountered. I ran into serious fog before leaving Santa Clara County to cross to the Great Valley, and it was a more or less constant companion on my two-hour drive. When I arrived at my destination before sunrise the fog was extremely thick, and there was hardly enough light for photography at first.

On these days the fog determines what the landscape looks like: what is the condition of the light? How transitory are the conditions? How far can we see? Is the fog dim and gray or does light in the sky above add color and make it luminous. While it started out on the dim and gray side on this morning, the thick fog wasn’t deep enough to block the light from the rising sun.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Two Men, Fifth Avenue

Image November 22, 2022 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A pedestrian walks past a police officer standing in the sun.

If you have been following along recently, you may recognize the return of a familiar character in this photograph, the police officer leaning against the sunny wall. This fellow was fascinating, though I don’t know quite what to make of what I observed. Most of the officers working this Manhattan parade were close to the crowd, moving about, and engaged. But this fellow did not move from this sunny spot while I was there. Several passers-by stopped and chatted him up, and it almost seemed like he knew them. But aside from that he mostly just leaned against the sun-warmed wall.

The other fellow was approaching from the right, and part of what originally caught my attention was the color of his jacket — which you’ll have to guess at, since it is now a monochrome photograph! Initially I thought that a photograph of just him would have been my preference, but I ended up liking the juxtaposition of his form with that of the cop. Beyond that you could probably read a whole range of stories and meanings into this one. Or not.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: sun

A Tree Revealed

Levee Road, Fog, and Tree

Pond, Fog, and Sun

Two Men, Fifth Avenue

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