Tag Archives: travel

What’s With All the Street Photography? (Morning Musings for 8/26/14)

August 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Since many of you may be more familiar with my landscape photography, it wouldn’t surprise me if a few of you are wondering what has happened? Where did it go? What’s up with all the street photography? How does this all connect? Does it connect at all?

First, the landscape photography hasn’t disappeared and more of it will return here soon. In fact, some upcoming landscape photography projects should generate quite a bit of that sort of work once again before very long.

Second, let me share a bit more about the recent (and upcoming) focus on urban, street, and travel photography.

One reason is practical. During the first part of this summer, scheduling and other issues conspired in ways that I ended up spending much less time in wild places than usual. To some extent, I regret having been unable to make it to the Sierra in the past couple of months, but on the other hand my favorite Sierra season is just beginning and I’ll be there quite a bit very soon.
While I did not travel to those places, I did travel to other places with interesting urban subjects. Most notably I spent two weeks traveling to Chicago and New York City, and I was able to photograph a lot in the latter location for over a week. Yes, you can expect to see a lot more New York City photographs!
While I obviously have a deep and long-standing connection to the natural world, especially that of the western United States, I also love cities. While it is unlikely that I’ll never live in a place like Manhattan, such urban areas fascinate and energize me, and my instinct is to photograph them.
Photography is photography — it isn’t just landscape photography, or wildlife photography, or portraits, or street photography, or sports photography, and it certainly isn’t limited to certain locations or subjects. I see almost all subjects as potential photographs, and I see many of the same underlying elements and concepts and structures in a wide range of subjects. In my view, there is a clear connection between how I see natural landscape and urban landscapes, between nature photography and street photography, and much more.
Shooting (and viewing) photography outside of my personal photographic comfort zone helps me see and understand all photographic subjects more clearly and more intensely. I’m convinced that my landscape photography experience informs my street photography, and that shooting street can make me see the landscape in new and interesting ways.

Whether you agree or not, I hope that you’ll find something interesting in this “different” work that is likely to appear quite a bit over the next few weeks. And if not… autumn is coming, I’m heading into the field to shoot landscapes again very soon, and you can look forward to new work of the more familiar sort again before long!

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Elephant Seals and Blue Water

August 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Elephant seals resting on a Southern California beach at the edge of the water

This time of year, a lot of elephant seal photographs are likely to be “elephant seals napping/resting/sleeping on beach” photographs, since that seems to be how these critters spend the bulk of their time. If 100 of them are around the beach, perhaps two are out for a swim, and occasionally one or two might move around a bit or engage in some biting, butting battles with one another, but the rest pretty much must there, occasionally flipping some sand on their backs or scratching somewhere.

This large group was crowded together tightly right along the edge of the wave line. For the most part there was little or no action, though occasionally one would come or go, or one might jockey for a more favorable position in the pile. I realized that if I moved further away from their position that I could shoot back over them right along the beach, and once I got to this camera position I realized that the wet sand beautifully reflected the blue of the sky.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Tree, Soberanes Canyon

August 15, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone tree at the base of rugged Soberanes Canyon

The Soberanes Canyon and Creek area of the upper Big Sur coast is, to me, a particularly interesting spot. Here in one place are a number of the characteristic features of this coastline: rocky sea stacks, rigged shoreline backed by coastal bluffs, big surf, beaches, a coastal valley leading steeply up into the mountains, and, of course, fog. It is a popular place, and there are often many cars stopped here. Some people park and head toward the ocean, while others head away and climb up the canyon.

The canyon leading up and away from the coast has intrigued me for a long time, though it wasn’t until relatively recently that I began to explore the area more carefully. One of the first things I realized about this canyon is that it can create some special conditions of light and atmosphere in the morning. Mornings are often a bit tricky on this coast, since if faces west and the sun rises behind tall mountains to the east. However, when the conditions are right, as the sun tops the high ridge the light often comes down into the canyon and backlights the coastal haze, obscuring the details of the canyon and sometimes creating a mystical quality.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Point Sur Lighthouse Station

August 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The historic lighthouse station atop Point Sur along the California Big Sur coastline

Point Sur, with its historic lighthouse station, is an iconic feature of the northern section of the Big Sur coastline along the Pacific Coast Highway in California. The distinctive “hill” (which I now know is known as a “morro”) is visible from far up the coast as you approach from the north, and once you get closer the tall, rounded hill at the far end of a sandy peninsula has a nearly unique appearance. (Not literally unique, as there are others, such as the eponymous Morro Rock further south at Morro Bay.)

Today the morro itself, with its lighthouse station structures, plus an old naval facility nearby, are part of the state park system. The surrounding land is still in private hands, but Californians and others can hope that it, too, may eventually expand the public land along the coast. The lighthouse station was constructed in the late 1800s, when this was a very remote section of the California coast, and the lighthouse staff and their families had to be nearly self-sufficient. The area is exposed to significant winds and surf, as it is exposed to the north. Today the lighthouse still works, though with a modern replacement for the original light. If you look closely you may be able to see the light along the descending ridge on the right side of the morro.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: travel

What’s With All the Street Photography? (Morning Musings for 8/26/14)

Tree, Soberanes Canyon

Point Sur Lighthouse Station

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