A quite, rainy day at a Central Park pond, Manhattan.
Photos are temporarily being shared without additional commentary. Watch for commentary to resume in late summer.
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.
A tree in a planter on a Manhattan sidewalk, amidst urban detritus of various sorts.
This is yet another photograph from my spring visit to New York City. There’s more going on in this photograph than might be immediately apparent. I’ll share a few hints here, but you may want to look a bit deeper, beyond my description, and even consider potential metaphors, not all of which may be immediately obvious. Some of them were not even obvious to me when I made the photograph, and I only saw them later. Yes, I’m being a bit opaque about this. Have fun…
The backstory is pretty simple. I was staying in Manhattan, a few blocks south of Central Park, while visiting my sons and daughters-in-law. My usual plan is to get out for a bit of a walk in the morning before connecting with them, though the constant wet weather interfered a bit with that. But I did head out for a random walk with my camera. I passed this planter before thinking that it might make a photograph, so I backed up and framed a couple of shots, mainly thinking about colors, the petals on the ground, and a few other odd juxtapositions.
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.
The glass surface of a New York building reflects and distorts its surroundings.
Scenes like this are, of course, common in big urban centers that are filled with tall, modern buildings. This one comes from Manhattan. One striking difference between many new buildings and those from a much earlier era is that today the surfaces are often nearly 100% windows and, as such, the buildings are extremely reflective. A few years ago it occurred to me how odd it is that what we see when we look at these buildings today is mostly not the buildings at all. The building is essentially invisible beyond the slender outlines of frames between windows. The “surface” we see is composed of other things — sky, clouds, other buildings — that are distorted by the qualities of the reflective surface. (I have an idea for a photo project: Remove all of the reflective surfaces from images of these buildings, leaving only the minimal structural elements that are actually visible.)
These buildings are one reason that I often refer to these places and photographs of them as “urban landscapes. There is a continuum in landscape photography. At one end lies subjects that are entirely “natural” — or at least seem to be so. Somewhere in between we enter the realm of historic landscape paintings, in which it was common to include the human presence. Continue along that trajectory far enough, and it is possible to see cities as being just a different sort of landscape, and that way of seeing leads to different ways of photographing them.
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.
Windswept Monterey cypress trees atop a rocky promontory, Point Lobos State Reserve.
This was just about a perfect visit to an old favorite location, Point Lobos State Reserve, located on the Pacific Coast between Carmel and the upper reaches of the Big Sur region. Back home in the San Francisco Bay Area it was another 90+ degree blue-sky day,, but fog blanketed this coastal area, periodically thinning just enough to allow some directional light on the landscape.
This can be a very busy and often overcrowded park, but by going on a weekday and arriving very early I can avoid the worst of it, and even in the summer it is possible to. find morning solitude here. These windswept Monterey cypress trees grow at the edge of the Pacific Ocean where the moist fog sweeps in. The largest tree in this scene manages to survive perched atop this rocky promontory.
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.
