Tag Archives: white

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Lee Vining Canyon and Mono Craters, Morning

July 16, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning clouds and haze over Mono Craters, as seen from the upper elevation of Lee Vining Canyon.

East of Tioga Pass, highway 120 (a.k.a. “Tioga Pass Road”) descends relatively gently past Tioga Lake and then Ellery Lake before it drop precipitously down the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada through Lee Vining Canyon on its way to the junction with highway 395 just south of the town of Lee Vining. I’ve driven over it for years, going back and forth between my home in the San Francisco Bay Area and the east side of the Sierra, so I should be fairly nonchalant about it by now – but every so often as I pass over the route (most often looking down into the canyon from above) I wonder whatever possessed people to think that it would be a good idea to route a road across the talus fields and across the steep headway of this canyon.

During last week’s photographic trip to the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite National Park I went over the pass twice. The first time was to scout out some possible shooting locations around Mono Lake – OK, and to get an espresso at Latte Da in Lee Vining – and the second was the following morning when I returned to shoot one of these locations. The night before I had moved my camp to Ellery Lake (it is a long story), which put me a bit closer to Mono Lake, so I was up well before dawn and at the lake before sunrise. After photographing my primary subject there right at dawn, I stuck around long enough to photograph the early morning light and haze above the lake, then headed back to break up my camp before heading home. As I crossed that headwall high up above Lee Vining Canyon, I looked east toward the Mono Craters. Looking that way is pretty much a habit, but I rarely find it to present anything that I want to photograph. This morning was different. I quickly found a turn-out and drove back to this spot. A nice haze filled the air (I like atmospheric haze for photography!), a few clouds clustered around ridges just beyond the volcanic Mono Craters, and a high line of clouds from monsoonal flow were in the far distance, with the steep walls of Lee Vining Canyon backlit and almost seen entirely in silhouette.

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: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Embarcadero Center Tower

July 14, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

“Embarcadero Plaza Tower” — Black and white rendition of Embarcadero Plaza Tower, San Francisco.

This may be a bit of a rude shock after all of the recent nature images, but here we go. I made this photograph in early July while spending a couple days in San Francisco. On the first afternoon I went out armed primarily with a, uh, 50mm prime, and I found myself interested in photographing the tall downtown buildings from very close up and with somewhat steep upward angles so that I could accentuate the converging perspective lines. (Some of the others in this series will be significantly abstract interpretations of these subjects.)

I made this while walking through”the row of Embarcadero Center buildings. It was quite close to sunset, so the shadows were beginning to fill a bit more with light than they would during the middle of the day, when the light and shadows are more harsh. However, since I was shooting in shadows and low light, I ended up hand holding the camera at a fairly low shutter speed since I need a relatively small aperture for depth of field, especially since I decided to let the two overhead support beams intrude into the space of the taller building. This image was also the result of some significant work in the post-processing stage, including the application of a blue filter layer (to get the sky to blow out to white) and a blurred overlay layer.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden

July 9, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.

After our recent stay in Portland, Oregon, I understand that there is more to the city than beer. Though don’t overlook the beer… ;-) Portland seems to be a city of gardens, at least in the central portion where we spent most of our visit. This may be redundant, but there are beautiful gardens of all types and in a variety of places. We visited nearly a half-dozen, even though that wasn’t the primary goal of our trip. (And, no, it wasn’t the beer, either. But that did figure in our plans, too.)

On this day we were walking around portions of the downtown area, mostly south of the main downtown center. In the afternoon we decided to head north and east a bit and walk into Portland’s Chinatown area. It is a much different place than the more compressed and more touristy Chinatown of San Francisco. Our main goal was the Lan Su Chinese Garden. This garden is a beautiful little marvel, located in an area where you might not expect to find such a thing. Although it occupies a very small downtown block, there is much to see inside, especially if you walk slowly and look carefully. At one point I imagined what it might be like to be in such a place alone, so I made a point of trying to make a few photographs that didn’t include other visitors, such as this black and white photograph of a covered walkway winding along an edge of the garden.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Two Bushes , San Francisco Home

July 5, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.

I can’t say with certainly just where in San Francisco I photographed this building, though I think it may have been in the North Beach neighborhood. To me it seemed like a superficially very simply building that turns out to be a lot more complex, and a just plain interesting example of a lot of surprising juxtapositions of shape and color.

Everything initially seems almost boringly “square” – the shapes on the garage door, the sections of the sidewalk in front of the garage, the abrupt and jutting shape of the upper story extension that leans out over the front entrance and the garage, the odd little window at the upper left, and the two symmetrically placed bushes in front of the garage and the front door. But with a little bit closer look, certain things seem to be off just a bit. Someone must have faced a difficult decision when the bushes grew too tall – whether to chop off the top of the one on the right and maintain the symmetry, or to instead let that one drop, throwing off the even balance – and doesn’t the one on the left sort of seem like the unruly brother of the one on the right?

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: white

Lee Vining Canyon and Mono Craters, Morning

Embarcadero Center Tower

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden

Two Bushes , San Francisco Home

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