Tag Archives: yellow

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

Video Surveillance

August 2, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Warning sign on a doorway to an interior space, Chinatown, San Francisco

When doing street photography I tend to “switch modes” as I photograph — one moment I might focus on people as individuals or in groups, and then my attention may shift to the “urban landscape,” the shapes and angles of the buildings and roads and sidewalks and more. At night there is always one more element, the unusual effects of artificial light on the scene. The light can be wildly diverse: Greenish from fluorescent lamps, yellow from sodium vapor, warm and saturated from tungsten, almost like daylight though perhaps cooler from LEDs, and occasionally the colors of dusk or the moon.

LED lighting, while wonderfully efficient, is not so wonderful for night photography. Since it mirrors the color balance of daylight so closely it takes away all of those color shadings. Some times it almost makes a night photograph look like day! I made this photograph shortly after I met up with a group of other photographers to walk through this section of San Francisco. At first I was focused in small things — windows, doorways, colorful business signs. As we descended one side street we passed this somewhat nondescript building, but in the nighttime light the interior glowed with an oddly colored light.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature

Aloe Flowers

July 18, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yellow aloe blossom

I’m not the primary flower photographer around here — that would be Patty Emerson Mitchell, with whom I visited the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens earlier this month. For me the flower photography is often a sort of experimental process and a chance to “play” at a sort of photography that I don’t do all that much. It was a sunny day (tough for flower photography!) but there was plenty of shade (good for flower photograph!) though there was a bit of wind (not so good!), which made me look for protected spots (good!) like this one, where I found these spectacular aloe blooms.

(I’m taking a brief break this weekend from posting my recent Sierra Nevada photographs — those will resume on Monday.)

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwood Trees and Redrock Canyon, Autumn

July 14, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Brilliantly colorful autumn cottonwood foliage winds down a Utah red rock canyon

After four days of photography and camping in the far reaches of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, I came out to civilization and spent a night at Boulder Mountain Lodge. (Not my usual thing, but I had an appointment to meet someone there — and it was quite a fine visit!) Arriving a bit early, I decided to head out on a nearby road just to see what I could see.

I knew this road a bit from traveling it in the past — I was looking forward to red rock cliffs and some cottonwood color. But I was not prepared for the intensity of the autumn cottonwoods in this little canyon. The effect was a combination of arriving at the peak moment of color for these trees, and the fact that the light was slightly softened by some high clouds. The result was one of those colorful scenes that you imagine but rarely actually find, with the tree winding down the canyon and around the far bend.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Fall Foliage, Sandstone Canyon

July 6, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The colors of fall foliage and red sandstone canyon rock, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah

These are the kinds of Utah colors that make some of us return to California and to find that “our Sierra Nevada” looks a bit more gray than we thought! In my experience, the color season in southern Utah begins in late September with the arrival of aspen color. (I have seen it, but so far have arrived just after the peak color.) It continues later in the month as the lower elevation cottonwood trees become intensely colorful. In some places the show is still continuing in early November.

The fall color show on its own would be impressive, but place those colors against the backdrop of Utah’s colorful sandstone landscape and the overall effect is very powerful. We returned from a daytime adventure elsewhere in Capitol Reef National Park and passed through this canyon area just before sunset. The light in the areas shaded by the tall cliffs was already becoming soft and luminous, and in this light the colors can become even more intense. We stopped and more or less wandered for as the sun continued to drop, photographing in the quite evening right up until the light was too far gone.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: yellow

Video Surveillance

Aloe Flowers

Cottonwood Trees and Redrock Canyon, Autumn

Fall Foliage, Sandstone Canyon

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