Tag Archives: white

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

Seagulls, Night Sky

October 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Seagulls fly through artificial lighting at night, San Francisco, California.

I wouldn’t mind if you speculated about how in the world I managed to get this king of lighting on a photograph of birds in flight. Let’s see, it couldn’t be on-camera flash since the light is coming from the side. Perhaps I concocted some elaborate multiple flash setup and then waited for the birds?

I’m afraid that the explanation is much more prosaic. To be honest, we were at a San Francisco Giants game on this evening. We go to Giants games for several reasons: the hope that the Giants might actually play well (not at the moment!), the great views from AT&T park, garlic fries (!)… and for me, photography. I always bring a camera and a lens, and partway through the game I usually take advantage of the upper areas of the stadium to photograph San Francisco and the Bay, often at sunset and dusk.

One more fact. Giants fans who attend games have discovered something astonishing about wildlife, namely that the sea gulls seem to be able to tell when it is the seventh inning or so. At about this point in the game, flocks of them begin to assemble over the park, circling above the field and the stands… and waiting for their chance to feast on the discarded food that is left all over the stadium. (My working theory is that they have somehow learned to associate a full stadium with the appearance of good stuff to eat about two or three hours later. They are apparently as fond of garlic fries as we are.)

So, on this evening when the gulls showed up they began to fly in and out of the stadium lighting, creating a somewhat stark and dramatic effect against the dark sky.

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

Fallen Aspen Branch, Snow

October 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Time to share aspen photos again! Each fall when the aspens change colors I head to the eastern Sierra to go aspen hunting! I made my first foray of the season this past weekend. I visited a number of the usual places – Bishop Creek, McGee Creek, Rock Creek, and Lee Vining Canyon. I’ve come to think that every aspen color season has a personality, defined by how and when and with what intensity the color appears, along with the related issues of the changing weather.

This year I think (from what I’ve heard) that the higher elevation trees were just changing colors about a week ago… before a strong early season storm came across the Sierra, dropping temperatures and quite a bit of snow. Over the weekend I saw up to about one foot of snow in places, which is an unusual amount for so early in the season. The aspen color was not exactly astonishing, and I think that the weather may be at least partially to blame. It seems that many of the mature colorful leaves were knocked down by the storm, and others that might now be colorful instead turned black and brown. While there was some interesting color, in many places I saw trees with leaves missing or trees that were almost fully still green.

The good news to take away from this is that since the lower elevation trees are still very green, there should be some fine aspen color very soon.

But I’ve often thought that a single leaf can be enough to make a photograph, and sometimes the single leaf can make a more effective image than a huge, colorful grove spanning many acres. So when I find that the color isn’t what I expected, one response is simply to look harder. As I walked along the road that passes North Lake, many of the subjects that I might have expected to photograph were nowhere to be seen. There were not large, spectacularly colorful trees. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground. So I looked harder… and one of the subjects I noticed was this single, small branch full of intensely colorful leaves lying on the snow.

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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

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Walls, Roofs, Orange Paint

October 9, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A section of brick wall above old roofs is painted bright orange, Chelsea, New York City.

This photograph was made from the High Line Elevated Park in morning light. If you like the textures and colors and machinery and forms of dense and old urban structures, there is a lot to see and photograph from the High Line. I made a photograph of the same under-construction area in the far right of this frame (not completely visible) a year ago, but that was at a very different time of the day. On this morning, the odd patch of bright orange paint on the brick wall (and the smaller bit around the door frame) got my attention, so I leaned as far as I could toward the edge of the walkway and made a photograph unobstructed by the guard rail.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Driveway and Brick Homes

September 20, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Black and white photograph of a concrete driveway between tightly-spaced brick homes, New York City.

I’m actually not precisely sure where in Manhattan this scene is any more. We were walking somewhere towards Chelsea when we passed through a little neighborhood of brick homes, and I just happened to notice this little scene as we walked past. Aside from plastic trash receptacles with plastic liners and the air conditioners, I don’t think there is much in this scene to date it, which is one of the reasons that I chose to go with a black and white rendition.

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