Images

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Sunset Fog and Clouds

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Sunset Fog and Clouds
Sunset fog and clouds above an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake after a storm.

Sunset Fog and Clouds. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Sunset fog and clouds above an Eastern Sierra Nevada lake after a storm.

As I do my year-end traverse of photographs from the preceding year I often find things that were left behind. This is one of those photographs. It comes from a weeklong backcountry photographic sojourn in the Eastern Sierra with a group of friends/photographers. We set up a basecamp and photographed the heck out of our surroundings during that week, devoting more time to the area than we could on a typical point-to-point backpacking trip.

Since I’ve told the story here before, I’ll keep it short — but we lived through the worst summer rain storm I’ve experienced in the Sierra. Twenty-four hours later the storm finally cleared late in the day, and this bit of late sunset light lit up the layers of clouds and fog to the east. It was an astonishing evening, and my photographs individually contain only parts of the remarkable whole.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Kitchen Tools #1

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Kitchen Tools #1
“Kitchen Tools #1” — Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

Indeed, I made more than one photograph in the kitchen this week. Will this be a new stylistic direction in my photography? Stay tuned and find out! Like yesterday’s photograph, this subject was on the kitchen counter. I needed something to test out a new camera with a macro lenses, no tiny bugs were handy, so here we are.

As I pondered these two kitchen photographs it stuck me that the patterns, especially with all of the soft blur in the images, reminded me of some close-up photograph s I have made of grasses and similar plants.

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.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email


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

Photographs: Still Life, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures

Kitchen Tools #2

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Kitchen Tools #2
Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

Kitchen Tools #2. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Close up photograph of kitchen implements.

When looking for subjects to test (otherwise know as “get to know”) a new camera or lens, it is amazing what things one can find to photograph! This week I’m trying to get up to speed on a new camera — more about that below — and how it works with some lenses I already have. On this evening I slapped a macro lens on the thing and headed to the kitchen to photograph… a whisk, blender blades, coffee cups, and others stuff that was lying around.

It is important to me to both understand objectively how my camera equipment functions and to develop an intuitive familiarity with it. The former helps me make smart decisions, and the latter is very important in the field, where I don’t want to get stuck wondering how the gear works. In this case, the new equipment is a Fujifilm X-T5 that I got to upgrade from the XPro2 that I’ve been using for my “small camera” photography for the past few years. For this photograph and a few others like it I put the Fujifilm 80mm macro on the camera.

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pizza Jack’s No. 2

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Pizza Jack's No. 2
“Pizza Jack’s No. 2” — The dilapidated Pizza Jack’s No. 2 storefront, San Jose, California.

Perhaps there was once pizza at Pizza Jack’s No. 2, but it looks like those days are gone. Though the string of holiday lights along the roof seems sort of festive — perhaps left over from a previous year? The building is in an “interesting” area of town, one that exists between better neighborhoods in one direction and lots of urban redevelopment in the other. This area is one with a lot of potential, but also a lot of abandoned and run-down stuff that probably won’t be here much longer.

This may end up being an unusual example of a photograph that I’ll release in both color and monochrome versions. For obvious reasons, I was thinking “color!” when I made the photograph, but in post it became clear that it also works in monochrome, though with a rather different effect. There’s an old adage about going to black and white in photographs where the color doesn’t tell the story. Here, color does tell at least one important story, but darned if it doesn’t work without the color, too.

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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.