Tag Archives: work

Commentary, Morning Musings, Photographers, Photographs: Photographers

Pick the Right Friends… (Morning Musings 9/29/14)

September 29, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

G Dan Mitchell Photographing in the Sierra Nevada

If you are ever in the wilderness and you want someone to take a photograph of you, you could hand your smartphone to the nearest person and hope for the best. However, I have a few suggestions (slightly tongue-in-cheek) that might improve the odds:

Arrange to be in the company of one of the best landscape photographers working today. (Yeah, that’s you, Charlie Cramer.)
Make a photograph of him at work and hope that this inspires him to photograph you doing the same thing.
Be sure to place yourself so that dramatic golden hour light hits you in partial profile.
Be sure to position yourself against an appropriate background.
Gaze attentively and thoughtfully into the distance. ;-)

Bonus hint: Be sure to level your tripod first, or your photographer friends may never let you live it down. ;-)

Here’s a photograph of Charlie at work, too

In all seriousness, when you are out shooting, do photograph your fellow photographers. Each of us needs photographs of ourselves, and a photograph by a friend (or of a friend) is a special thing.

Thanks, Charlie!

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: Photographers

Photographer, Fog

February 20, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Photographer Michael Frye at work in early morning tule fog, San Joaquin Valley

A small group of us met up on this mid-February morning to photograph migratory birds, winter fog, and the San Joaquin Valley landscape. We came from different directions, beginning our travels well before dawn so that we could meet here before sunrise. We met shortly after 6:00, exchanged greetings in the pre-dawn dark, and then got ready to shoot. I lagged behind a bit while getting gear ready, and our friends Michael and Claudia started off down the gravel road before Patty and I did. Very soon were ready to follow, and in moments we found their car parked near a grassy area.

The fog was dense but also very shallow – nearly ideal for photography since it blanketed everything in a mysterious layer but still allowed the colors of the developing dawn sky to penetrate right down to ground level and make the fog layer glow with luminous color. Michael must have seen this coming, and he was already across a grassy area and at the edge of a pond when I arrived, and he was barely visible through the fog. My first thought was to “work” this solitary tree as my primary subject as the light came up, but first I thought I’d grab a photograph of him silhouetted against the foggy landscape. I made this photograph and then walked to the edge of the pond and made my own series of photographs of the tree, the water, and the foggy atmosphere as the light passed through a range of colors that the eventually revealed higher clouds lit by the dawn sunlight.

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.

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

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

December 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

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 Photography

Tag Archives: work

Pick the Right Friends… (Morning Musings 9/29/14)

Photographer, Fog

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden

Sierra Nevada Photographers, Golden Hour Light

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