G Dan Mitchell Photography

G Dan Mitchell is a California-based photographer of subjects including the Sierra Nevada, Pacific coast, Central California, California deserts, and San Francisco Bay Area urban landscapes and street subjects.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

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

dan@gdanmitchell.com

Web Sites

G Dan Mitchell | Photography – http://www.gdanmitchell.com/
dan’s outside – http://outside.danmitchell.org/

Other

Flickr: gdanmitchell
Twitter: gdanmitchell
Facebook: gdanmitchell
Friendfeed: gdanmitchell

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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 virtually every day. This encourages me to shoot more often and to me to seek out images I may have overlooked in my collection.

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.

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Photography and Me

I started doing photography at a pretty 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 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.

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.

Then came digital photography. I could take lots of photos 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 carry a small selection of high quality lenses (see Canon EF 17-40mm L f4 Lens, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS L Lens, Canon EF 70-200mm f4 L, Canon EF 35mm f/2  Canon EF 50mm f1.4, Canon EF85mm f/1.8, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS Lens) along with a small set of filters and a carbon fiber tripod.

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, a few 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

I understand that there may be some new (as of October 2009) requirement that bloggers like me disclose whether they have received any free products or compensation for reviews on their web sites and whether they profit in any other ways from what they publish. I may be over-stating that, but to be on the safe and honest side, here is a statement about this as of mid-October 2009.

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.

This web site has an “affiliate” relationship with B&H Photo-Video. When site visitors make purchases by clicking on B&H links at this web site I may receive a small payment based on a percentage of the purchase price. 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 at B&H for those who wish to click it. For the record, I am also a customer of B&H and when I purchase photographic equipment online I most often purchase from them and have done so since prior to establishing the affiliate relationship. Also for the record, this “income” from this relationship is rarely enough to cover the costs of operating the site and could accurately be described as “a few dollars a month.”

As I clearly noted on the site, you can purchase photographs shown at this site either in printed form or via license.

G Dan Mitchell on Jul.02.2007
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