Tag Archives: vein

Colorful Rocks, Lichen

Colorful Rocks, Lichen
A shadowed rock face with red lichen

Colorful Rocks, Lichen. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A shadowed rock face with red lichen

This photograph looks at some details that might be easy to overlook. The rock face was located along a trail we walked on our way to our base camp for nearly a week of Sierra Nevada backcountry photography, and we ended up camping perhaps a half mile from this spot. Most of my focus was on higher terrain, but later during our visit I found the time to walk down-canyon to this spot and photograph this wall.

Several things were striking about this feature. From a personal perspective, I was surprised that I had completely ignore such an interesting source of intimate landscapes when I walked past it the first time. Now, as I revisited it, I realized that the light here was quite special, with some reflections from bright, high peaks across the valley, and additional light coming from the blue sky, with both sources filling in soft light. Here and there small plants found a foothold in cracks, and colorful lichens, ranging from intense reds and oranges through bright greens and yellows grew on the face.


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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Hostas Leaves #2

Hostas Leaves #2 - Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden
Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden

Hostas Leaves #2. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden.

I made this small series of photographs of the leaves of hostas plants while wandering around the extensive rose gardens at Portland, Oregon’s Washington Park. I’m not a big fan of photographing roses – though I’m fascinated by looking at them – so I had not made any photographs while visiting that primary area of the garden, but once we began to poke around in some of the peripheral gardens that featured other kinds of plants I started to see things that attracted my own photographic interest more strongly. This set of leaves was in a large bed of hostas plants along a walkway and in the shade, and I thought that the colors and textures of their overlapping leaves created some very interesting patterns.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

Hostas Leaves #1

Hostas Leaves #1 - Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden
Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden

Hostas Leaves #1. Portland, Oregon. July 3, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hostas leaves growing in a Portland, Oregon garden.

I made this small series of photographs of the leaves of hostas plants while wandering around the extensive rose gardens at Portland, Oregon’s Washington Park. I’m not a big fan of photographing roses – though I’m fascinated by looking at them – so I had not made any photographs while visiting that primary area of the garden, but once we began to poke around in some of the peripheral gardens that featured other kinds of plants I started to see things that attracted my own photographic interest more strongly. This set of leaves was in a large bed of hostas plants along a walkway and in the shade, and I thought that the colors and textures of their overlapping leaves created some very interesting patterns.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.

Red and Orange Aspen Leaves

Red and Orange Aspen Leaves
Red and Orange Aspen Leaves

Red and Orange Aspen Leaves. Bishop Creek, California. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Intensely colorful red and orange autumn aspen leaves in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Late in the day on this rainy eastern Sierra fall day I headed for a small dirt side road that I know of in the Bishop Creek drainage. Along this road are a few special aspen groves that I have photographed in the past, including one with very slender trees and sometimes fiery colors. This time I was there a bit earlier than in the past and, ironically, the leaves on these trees were so thick that they didn’t lend themselves to the photograph I had in mind. I did make a few photograph of these trees – one of which will likely appear here before long – but then I decided to try something other than what originally brought me to this spot.

I put the 135mm f/2 lens on the camera – perhaps not a typical landscape lens, but quite nice for shooting close images of leaves and creating soft background blur – and went hunting for small groups of leaves with appropriate backgrounds. Because it was late in the day and in an area where the sun drops behind ridges fairly early and overcast and raining intermittently, the light was really interesting. While this light can mute some colors, it also fills in the shadows a bit and can intensify the colors of bright subjects like the aspen leaves.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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