Tag Archives: work

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden

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Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden - A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.
A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden. Portland, Oregon. July 2, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

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.

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

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

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Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light
Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Photographers Charles Cramer and Karl Kroeber working in golden hour light along the shore of a sub-alpine lake high in the Sierra Nevada back-country of Yosemite National Park.

Look! A photograph of people! :-)

I spent a week or so on the trail in the Yosemite back-country with a group of five other photographers this past September. We spent a good stretch of time in the area of some scenic lakes in the northeastern portion of the park. I was out for a week and a day, while the rest of the group spent a few additional days on the trail. Not too long after arriving at the nearby sub-alpine lake that was to be our home for several days, various members of the group started to explore the surrounding area, and on this evening we all decided to climb up the valley from “our” lake to the next higher lake along the drainage. We travelled more or less cross-country up the shallow valley of the creek between the two lakes, passing through beautiful meadows before arriving along the shore of this lake very late in the afternoon.

Once we arrived we more or less split up and focused on different portions of the lake and its surroundings. I mostly shot in one very small area where some beautiful granite boulders were embedded in the shoreline meadow, providing an interesting foreground for photographs across the lake to a nearby peak as the golden hour light arrived. At one point I noticed that my friends Charlie Cramer and Karl Kroeber were shooting nearby, so I paused from my landscape photography to pivot my camera in their direction and make a photograph of them as they worked the golden hour light.

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 | Facebook | Google+ | 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.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Stonework Detail, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine

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Stonework Detail, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
Stonework Detail, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine

Stonework Detail, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. New York, New York. August 15, 2010. © Copyright 2010 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of stonework at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York City.

Early in the morning we took the subway north to the area around Columbia University where we had been told to visit a Hungarian bakery. (Worth the visit, by the way…) This “cathedral church,” which I had heard of but not seen in person, is located almost across the street. We started in the nearby sculpture garden which features a large, central sculpture (too much to say about it to try to do it here) which is surrounded by small pieces created by schoolchildren. From here it was a very short walk to the cathedral itself.

The cathedral is a powerful piece of architecture, much larger and more imposing than many of the other famous religious sites that I’ve seen in New York. I first made a series of photographs of the interesting textures and forms of the exterior of the building, including this photograph, taking advantage of the soft light created by the cloudy conditions. Eventually we made our way inside. I took no photographs inside the cathedral, partly because there was a service going on and because I was quite affected by the scale of the interior space… and by the very interesting and unusual music being performed by the organist.

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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Commentary, News, Photographers, Workshops

News From Charles Cramer

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I got an email from Charles Cramer last week, meant to pass some of his news along right away, and then became very busy and forgot. (My excuse is a combination of having a ton of papers to grade and about 40 prints to make!) Anyway, better late than never…

The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley is having a show of Charlie’s work through May 27th. You can see some examples of his work from the show here. (I’m fond of most all of his photographs, but the luminous photograph of an aspen grove found in this series is one of my favorites.) If you are in the Valley during the next week and a half, be sure to stop by the Gallery and linger for a while  – if nothing else it sounds like a great way to spend some time during the midday non-shooting interval! (It would certainly be more edifying than what I usually do in the middle of my epic One-Day Bay Area to Yosemite and Back marathons: nap for an hour in my car!)

Charlie does workshops. He reports that almost all of them are currently sold out, but that are still some openings for a workshop in Santa Clara, California on June 26-28. Highly recommended – more information online. I’ve been fortunate to have Charlie share some of his vast knowledge of photography and printing with me, and I know personally how well he explains important concepts and techniques and how insightful he is when it comes to seeing and critiquing your photographs. He also has a great – though slightly twisted – sense of humor as well. If you have a chance to read his Photoshop Techniques booklet, you know what I mean.