Tag Archives: usa

Photographs: Photographers, Photographs: Urban/Street

Photographer Doug Kaye

November 7, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Photographer Doug Kaye prowling a San Francisco alley in late afternoon light

Back in early September I joined up with a group of fellow photographers to explore areas of downtown San Francisco in late afternoon light, followed by dinner, and then a return to the streets to photograph at night. Among the group was photographer Doug Kaye, here seen walking into the light along a narrow San Francisco street, a street lined with a bit of Dr. Seuss architecture with wildly dissonant angles from shadows, fire escape leaders, perspective convergence, and a crazily tilting lamp-post.

Later on this evening we headed back out after dark to photograph areas between roughly upper Chinatown and the Union Square vicinity. Night street photography is rapidly becoming a bit of a passion. Last year on a trip to Manhattan I realized that my little mirrorless camera performs well enough at high ISOs that I can effectively do handheld photography in the urban night environment — and this was a revelation!

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Cottonwood and Aspen, Autumn, Eastern Sierra

November 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fall colors come to cottonwood and aspen groves in McGee Canyon

From the valley east of the Sierra the upper reaches of this canyon are not hard to see, though the bottom of the canyon and its entrance point are not so obvious. Pulling off on US 395 some distance from the canyon, a road rises up the alluvial hills at the base of the Sierra and traverses across toward an old lateral moraine. Rounding this hill, the tree-lined creek draining the canyon comes into view and a gentle through sage brush country passes a campground and a pack station before reaching the end of the road and trailhead.

This canyon rises quickly, and from the cottonwood lowlands one can hike into subalpine country in a short time, and it isn’t much further to get to backcountry lakes that seem to sit at the base of the Sierra crest. I paused along the road in the sage brush zone to make this photograph. Fall cottonwood trees are in the foreground, and further up the U-shaped canyon aspen trees have turned yellow. The remnants of an early autumn storm are seen, too, in the dusting of snow high up the rocky slopes at the head of the canyon.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Receding Ridges, Rain

November 5, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A squall moves across hills near the base of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada

This photograph belongs to a portion of my work that I think of as minimalist landscapes. They often focus on landscapes that are largely hidden or in which some elements are obscured. Not all involve mist, clouds, fog, and rain, but quite a few do. In many of them I am trying to work with a kind of light that is very special to me, where the atmosphere itself becomes luminous, perhaps when filled with haze or fog or dust and lit from behind, producing a kind of glowing effect that can be so bright that it is hard to look into.

On this day I had, or so I thought, finished my autumn photography on this trip, and I was in my “heading home” mode. I had driven down from the mountains, where I had photographed in rain and incoming light snow earlier in the morning, stopped in a town along US 395 for coffee and something to eat, then gotten into my vehicle to hit the road. Not 15 minutes north of town I came to a familiar spot where I often stop to admire the view and sometimes photograph. I pulled over and went a ways up a side road and watched the landscape disappear behind rain and clouds as a squall moved through. I set up under the rear door of my vehicle so that I could have some shelter from the rain, and I began looking for places in the landscape where there was just enough detail to suggest its form but no more than necessary. (Trivia fact: This is a color photograph!)

Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Man In White Pants

November 4, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A man walks into the sun on a San Francisco sidewalk

After more than a month filled with colorful photographs of autumn foliage in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, I’m going to cleanse my palate a bit… with a black and white street photograph. I know it seems odd and even inexplicable to some that someone who photographs the natural world and likes to spend time there would also be attracted to photographing the constructed world of urban streets — but I do. In some ways I think of this other universe as more of an extension of the same way of seeing that attracts me to natural landscapes. These are simply urban landscapes and they are populated by people rather than animals. The same light falls on the city and on the mountains. In addition, photographing street tunes up my visual sense, forcing me to quickly see and respond to compositions, light, and subjects.

On a couple of occasions this past summer I joined a small group of like-minded photographers to wander around parts of San Francisco making photographs at night. We generally assembled in the late afternoon, photographed first in the daylight late in the day, grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed back out into the evening to photograph street scenes under ambient and artificial light. Here I headed up a street into the late afternoon light, focusing initially on the backlit subjects and the lengthening shadows, and then this fellow walked into the scene.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: usa

Photographer Doug Kaye

Cottonwood and Aspen, Autumn, Eastern Sierra

Receding Ridges, Rain

Man In White Pants

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