Tag Archives: utah

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

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Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants
Plants grow in cracks in a sandstone cliff, Zion Naitonal Park.

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Plants grow in cracks in a sandstone cliff, Zion Naitonal Park.

One unanticipated result of the pandemic restrictions on travel has been that I’ve had plenty of time to start digging through my archive of photographs made over the years. In some cases I have “discovered” photograph files that I had originally left behind, either because I didn’t understand how the image could work at that time or because I simply got distracted by other things and moved on. In addition to finding these “lost files,” the process of revisiting old work has caused me to rethink my original presentation of some photographs that I thought I was done with. This is one of those photographs.

The subject is in Zion National Park, where it is easy to find all sorts of interesting things along the red rock canyon walls. As I looked at my first take on this photograph, done eight years ago, I felt that I wanted to interpret it a bit differently. This version is cropped a bit more tightly, and I’ve handled the dynamic range of the scene a bit differently, perhaps retaining a bit more of the feeling subjects shaded by tall cliffs.

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 and Amazon.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Utah

Three Sisters, Sheep Rock

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Three Sisters, Sheep Rock
The Three Sisters, Sheep Rock, and other red rock formations, Arches National Park.

Three Sisters, Sheep Rock. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Three Sisters, Sheep Rock, and other red rock formations, Arches National Park.

There are so many things bound up in photographs like this one that it would be possible to write a book about it. This was my first visit to this landscape and, as such, it was part of the rare experience of being in a place that I did not know at all. It also raises questions about the value of photographing icons — hint: there is some, but it is complicated. It is a photograph I made some years ago, bringing up the value of revisiting photographs that were originally left behind or perhaps interpreted differently. It brings up the questions about what landscape photographers do when the landscape is inaccessible.

I made the photograph during perhaps my first hour or two in Arches National Park. For someone who read Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” decades ago, this visit was a long time coming. And, aside from that book, I came with few preconceptions about the park, and I had not researched before arriving. Consequently, as we drove in late the first afternoon I had almost no idea of what I would see. I was amazed.

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 and Amazon.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Snag, Red Rock

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Snag, Red Rock
An old snag stands in front of a freactured red rock cliff.

Snag, Red Rock. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An old snag stands in front of a fractured red rock cliff.

Let me repeat a slightly embarrassing story that I’ve told before. For many years I did not bother to photograph in the Southwest. There are several facets to the explanation. I was something of a Sierra “bigot” — I loved that landscape so much that I could hardly understand why I would want to look elsewhere. In addition, when I was very young and my family drove between our California home and the Midwestern states where my relatives lived, I thought that our route through Utah was boring.

So it was only in the last decade or so that I finally “discovered” Utah’s beautiful red rock landscapes. My first visit was on a spring trip that took us to Zion, then across the state through Bryce and Capitol Reef (perhaps the most under-appreciated of these parks) and then to Moab where we visited Arches and Canyonlands. Since that time I have returned at other times of the year and pushed my explorations out beyond the boundaries of the parks, but this photograph comes from that first visit.

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 and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

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Weathered and cracked numbers painted on the wall of an old San Francisco hotel

50. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Weathered and cracked numbers painted on the wall of an old San Francisco hotel.

Photographs like this one have, at least for me, several purposes or rationales. To some extent, walking into a regular city environment and looking for little visual odds and ends is an important exercise in visual awareness. It is so easy to walk through such places and not pay a lot of attention, and when you do so while searching for images you see things that you’d otherwise miss. It is also interesting, I think, to “excerpt” small things from their larger context. (This bit of signage, is small enough that you might barely notice it if you took in the whole building at once.) With this one there is also a bit of that odd characteristic of some photographs, where their age — or the age of the subject — becomes somewhat interesting on its own.

So, what is it? It is a bit of a hand-painted street number sign on a very old (and somewhat iconic) building on a street in San Francisco that I often walk on these street photography visits. What else is it? It is color and form, abstracted to some extent from its original context. But not entirely abstracted, since if you look closely you might notice the extremely weathered and cracked paint and you might wonder about the history of this little bit of a sign, especially in an era when one-of-a-kind hand-painted signage is increasingly replaced by industrial signage.

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 and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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