Tag Archives: travel

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Il Trovatore

May 3, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Two women near Il Trovatore, corner of Kearny and Broadway, San Francisco.

This is a simple (or maybe not so simple) street scene at the corner of Kearny and Broadway in San Francisco. I had wandered into this area on one of my street photography shoots in The City, on which I generally walk somewhat randomly through various parts of the town and shoot whatever catches my fancy.

I had just finished shooting the “Macchiarini Steps,” which are visible at the lower right. These very steep steps constitute the “sidewalk” on this short street, which is too steep for a normal sidewalk. I had first shot from Broadway, aiming up this hill, then decided to walk up the hill itself and shoot the steeps against the background of some rather dilapidated buildings. I managed to incorporate people into some of those shots using a technique that I often employ when shooting in the city: I treat the scene like a landscape and find a composition that seems to work, and then I wait for the right people to wander into the scene.

Eventually I walked back down this street and saw this juxtaposition of brick walls, red and green poles, the green and white colors of the upper-story “Il Trovatore” (which I assume is an Italian restaurant) and the more distant buildings with their faded colors against an overcast sky. I also liked the fact the very steep stairs ended up being parallel to the bottom of the frame. In addition to all that, this is also about colors: the red jacket on the woman crossing the street, the very red lamp post on the sidewalk, the red of the brick buildings; green colors of the chalk board, the restaurant, and the street sign; and then the odd bits of yellow on the sidewalk and the street.

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Commentary, News, Photographs: Death Valley, Site News

G Dan Mitchell Photographs at Stovepipe Wells

April 30, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

G Dan Mitchell Photographs, Stovepipe Wells Lodge

Since several people have asked, I thought I would share an update on installation of my photographs at the historic Stovepipe Wells Lodge in Death Valley National Park. Late last year Ortega Family Enterprises (who also sell some of my photographs at Muir Woods National Monument) contacted me. They were about to take over the management of the facility from the previous concessionaire and were interested in selling some of my Death Valley photographs in the gift shop at Stovepipe Wells.

It turns out that they were also planning some significant upgrades to the lodging facilities at Stovepipe and they asked if I could provide a large number of 16″ x 24″ prints for the guest rooms. To make a long story short, they selected a half dozen of my Death Valley photographs and I went to work making nearly 170 prints of the six photographs, which were then shipped off to their framer for final preparation.

I finally got a chance to see the results when I visited Death Vally in early April. I stopped by and found out that they had begun the process of hanging the prints in guest rooms, and with the help of an employee I was able to get in long enough to snap a shot of one of the rooms. (Hanging in this room are “Transverse Dunes, Death Valley“ and “Crossing Tracks, Racetrack Playa.”) It was also good to see some work being done to upgrade and update the lodge!

It is gratifying to have my photographs installed here for several reasons. Several of the photographs were made virtually within walking distance of Stovepipe Wells, where I often camp when I visit the Valley. I also know that among the many people who visit Stovepipe will be a good number of my fellow photographers – and knowing that they will see my prints here is both a bit intimidating and a quite exciting! Finally, before Ortega took over the facility I often stopped to look at some of the photographs and paintings that had been there previously. (I was glad to see that one wonderful black and white photograph was still hanging in the hotel office.) With that in mind, it seems like there is a good chance that these photographs of mine may be hanging in this historic facility for some time to come!

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Post-Sunset Glow, Amargosa Range

April 24, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Post-sunset light from bright red clouds casts a reddish glow on the Amargosa Range, Death Valley Buttes, and the Kit Fox Hills.

I think this might be the second in what I could call the “impossible color” series from my late-March trip to Death Valley. (The previous image was a photograph of a wash/alluvial fan at the base of Tucki Mountain, photographed on the same evening.) The lurid and unreal colors are not the result of post-processing gone horribly wrong – the light was actually this color for a short period. The sun had already gone down behind the Cottonwood Mountains to the west of my shooting location in the middle of Death Valley not far from Stovepipe Wells. It had been an interesting sunset with the usual increase in warm colors and some attractive clouds in the sky.

What happened next was something that is probably familiar to those who have done a lot of landscape photography, though they recognize that it is not something that you can quite predict. After the sun had set and dusk was coming on, some final light from far to the west, where the sun had probably already dropped just below the horizon, began to strike high clouds above Death Valley. (I could sort of see this coming, since I had noticed increasing color in the sky further to the east.) As this happened, these clouds began to glow with an intense red color that was mixed with the normal bluish tones of dusk light and surface features took on this purple/red glow for just a brief moment before the light faded.

(Those who look very carefully may notice that the sky above and to the east of the mountains is a lot bluer than the mountains themselves. The color had already left the sky to the east, and at this point was coming from the sky directly overhead and to my west.)

I’m still trying to sort out the complex geology of this area and the ways that features are named. The larger range containing these peaks is called the Amargosa Range, though it encompasses many smaller named sub-ranges – I think these might be part of the Grapevine Mountains, roughly in the neighborhood of Thimble and Corkscrew Peaks. A dark peak in front of the main range at the very far right may be part of Death Valley Buttes, and the banded foreground hills are sometimes called the “Kit Fox Hills.”

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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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Hill Near Mesquite Flat, Dusk

April 23, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dusk light above a hill near Mesquite Flat in Death Valley, backed by a large alluvial fan from Tucki Mountain.

At the end of this day I was shooting from the top of a low hill in the Valley east of Stovepipe Wells, and there were interesting subjects throughout almost the entire 360 degree panorama around this elevated position. With this in mind, I had chosen to use the long 100-400mm zoom so that I could have some flexibility in composing elements of this huge scene.

I was mainly working with things that were in the large arc to my west (dunes and Cottonwood mountains and base of Tucki Mountain), north (the main Valley and transverse dunes), and east (the mountains running along that edge of the Valley) since the further subjects of the lower Valley were more or less out of sight beyond the alluvial fan that appears in the photograph. But I kept being intrigued by the low, dark hill on the flats below the similar hill on which I was standing. There is a row of them stretching from near the Devils Cornfield area up and across this alluvial fan. As the evening light transitioned towards post-sunset light I saw that the glow from clouds (a bit of which is visible in the distance above the Black Mountains) was lighting this hill and the surrounding flats in an interesting and colorful way.

But I had a little problem. I was still working a number of subjects and once and I really needed to keep shooting that 100-400. 100mm was still too long for this scene, but I didn’t have time to remove it and put on a shorter lens. I figured that I could simply change the camera to vertical orientation, very carefully level the tripod, and include the whole scene in four panning vertical frames that I could stitch together later. People often do this so that they can produce extremely high-resolution image, but that wasn’t my goal at all. In any case, it worked, and not only did I manage to get the shot that needed a wider lens, but as a bonus it is a very high-resolution shot.

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