About G Dan Mitchell Photographer

About

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, the redwoods, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, street photography, and night photography.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

P.O. Box 8655
San Jose California 95155-8655
408-504-3266

dan@gdanmitchell.com
gdanmitchell@gmail.com (alternate email)

You may also use the contact form at the bottom of this page to send me a direct email message.

Web Site

G Dan Mitchell | Photography – http://www.gdanmitchell.com/

Other

Find me on:

Dan Mitchell. Mission Peak. November 23, 2006. © Copyright Tom Clifton. Used by permission.

Among other things I use this site to post images “on the fly,” along with information and observations on the photos. As an “assignment to myself” I post a new image every day and have been doing so for several years.. This encourages me to shoot more often and to me to seek out images I may have overlooked in my collection. Practice makes perfect – or at least makes better!

All photographs are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved unless otherwise explicitly indicated. My photographs have not been placed in the public domain, and any use requires advance permission. Many images may be purchased as prints and/or may be licensed for other uses with permission. See the Purchasing Photographs page for more information.

To see more photography visit dan’s outside and my Flickr gallery.

Photography and Me

I started doing photography at a very young age. I can’t tell you what year, but I’m sure it was in elementary school. My father was a professor of instructional technology and a talented and dedicated amateur photographer. He had camera gear (including a big old Graflex) and a darkroom he would set up in the bathroom. He taught me to print black and white and he gave me good advice – that I probably didn’t appreciate nearly enough at the time. For example, he always told me to step closer to my subject. What he was really suggesting was that I had to think beyond how cool my subject seemed to me, and to visualize what it would ultimately look like as a print.

In high school I shot a lot of black and white, developing the film myself and printing at home or (better yet) using the equipment at school. (I now look back at a very large black and white image of some oak trees that appears in the yearbook inside the covers… and it is apparent that I was already “seeing” in some of the ways that I do today.)

By the time I was in my mid-twenties I had acquired a couple of Pentax 35mm cameras (MX and ME) along with a small set of lenses that I used a great deal on backpacking trips. On two-week trips my wife and I would often carry nearly 20 rolls of slide film.

As time went on I found that the camera gear was interfering with my backcountry experience. Eventually I stopped carrying the Pentax cameras and extra lenses. I gradually “slipped” to the point that I was carrying only a small Olympus Zoom camera and mostly just recording my experience, as opposed to making photographs. I continued to spend a lot of time in the backcountry, but at that point in my life I felt unburdened when I left the camera gear at home. Ah, well…

Then came digital photography. I was doing digital quite early, initially using some cameras that seem remarkably crude by today’s stands, such as the early Apple “Quicktake” camera. I could make lots of photographs and quickly see and edit them, learning quickly from the process. In addition, I could share pictures on the web. All of this rekindled my interest in photography.

I have gone through a series of digital cameras since that time:

Apple Quicktake camera. Does anyone else remember this camera? It was one of the first affordable digital cameras, though the quality was not good enough for much of anything beyond small images posted on the web.
Olympus D40. I took this little 4 megapixel camera on a three-week Alaska cycling tour since it was small and used AA batteries.
Canon Pro 1. This digicam was a great improvement since it is an 8 megapixel camera with a zoom lens equivalent to a 28mm-200mm lens on 35mm. The image quality is pretty decent if you understand the camera’s limits, and it made a great backpacking camera.
Canon Digital Rebel XT. Small and lightweight with 8 megapixel resolution this camera can produce outstanding images, and this is a camera I can take almost anywhere.
Canon EOS 5D. Larger and heavier than the 350D/XT, but with a full frame 12 megapixel sensor, this camera can produce even higher quality images.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Similar to the 5D in many ways but updated in other significant areas that have beneficial effects on resolution in larger prints: 21 MP full-frame sensor, live view for critical manual focusing, etc.

Ultimately I have discovered that digital cameras and digital post-processing (e.g. – the “digital darkroom”) provide the potential for creating very, very fine photographic images and prints. I am absolutely certain that many great photographic masters of the past would have embraced this equipment and these techniques wholeheartedly. I know that many of today’s masters do.

I carry a selection of high quality lenses, tripod, filters, and there other usual stuff – see my “gear” page for the details.

If you have looked around this site it should be obvious that I’m interested in more or less wild landscapes. However, I’m also intrigued by urban landscapes, wildlife, nature, night photography, musicians, some sports, street photography, and a few other odds and ends.

Dan

Dan Mitchell. Point Lobos. December 27, 2005. © Copyright Jameson Mitchell.

Disclaimer

The information I post at this site should be regarded as representing only my own personal experience and opinions – and I cannot guarantee that your experience will be the same or that information I post is always accurate, up to date, or the best available. I urge you to seek out competent and expert opinions and information – especially including that from the manufacturers of products you use or may consider buying – and regard my posts as only one perspective among many.

Note about product reviews and commercial links

As of this writing, I have never been compensated for reviewing or writing about a product. I have never been offered such compensation either as a payment or in the form of free products.

As far as I can recall, the only products I have received from manufacturers are a couple of camera bags from Lowepro. I previously had purchased my own Lowepro products and have purchased others since that time. The two bags were provided to me without any request for a review, and the decision to write about them was entirely my own and based on my positive experience with them.

I sometimes note photographic workshops and so forth for which a fee is paid if I think they might be useful or interesting for my readers. I have never received any compensation in any form for sharing these announcements or for recommending some of them. My recommendations have been purely because I think they sound like good and worthwhile events or, in a few cases, because I personally know the workshop presenters and their work.

From time to time this web site may display the advertisements of affiliate vendors and manufacturers. When site visitors make purchases by clicking on these links I may receive a small payment based on a percentage of the purchase price or some other formula. In some cases when I mention a product on this site in the course of a review, announcement or similar post I may include a link to the product for those who wish to click it. Your purchases through these links help support the blog – and I’m grateful for that!

As noted in various places on this site, you can purchase my photographs either in printed form or via license.

Finally, the real me, photographed by my brother, Pacific Northwest photographer Richard Mitchell:

G Dan Mitchell

Contact Form – Please fill out this form to send me an email message.

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.