G Dan Mitchell Photography

One advantage of shooting with other talented photographers is that every so often one of them actually produces a good photograph of me! On last weekend’s visit to the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and the Artist Point area, my brother Richard was my guide and fellow photographer – and he made a photograph of me that I like quite a bit. Thanks, Richard!

G Dan Mitchell at Mt. Shuksan. Photograph © Copyright Richard Mitchell. Use by permission.

G Dan Mitchell :: Sep.02.2010 :: Commentary, Site News :: 2 Comments »

I recently posted a report on my initial use of my iPad for photography (and other) purposes while traveling. (See “An Itinerant Photographer and His Ipad: A First Report.”) My general conclusion was that you can do some post-processing on the iPad but that – no surprise here – it isn’t exactly Photoshop.

But still… if necessary you can do certain types of real work on the iPad. One of the reasons I was in New York last week was to photograph ‘Così fan tutte: Some Assembly Required’, an interesting combination of opera performance, opera rehearsal, and conversation about the work and its preparation that was presented at the Gershwin Hotel. (As an extra bonus, my wife was playing principal oboe on the first two nights, and her brother was playing bassoon!) You can see examples of the results at the oboeinsight.com blog, where initial photographs from the first night of  are posted. (Note that the last photo in the series was made on my iPhone and uploaded directly.)

After transferring my 5D2 RAW files to the iPad, I used the Photogene app to open the files, edit basic settings such as saturation, brightness, black point, curves, sharpening, and so forth. Then I cropped the files, reduced their pixel dimensions for web display, exported as jpg files, and uploaded them.

G Dan Mitchell :: Aug.24.2010 :: Commentary, Equipment, Technique :: No Comments »

The Standard Hotel and Clouds

The Standard Hotel and Clouds. New York, New York. August 18, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The windows of the Standard Hotel reflect clouds and sky above the High Line Park.

We spent a week in New York City in mid-August – our first visit in a decade. I had forgotten a lot about the character of this city, but it all started coming back to me as we drove into Manhattan on a Friday evening and encountered people everywhere, out and about and doing all of the things that one does here. I have many images in my mind from the visit, but one is a sort of combination of massive, tall, and static structures surrounded by the constant motion of vehicles and people.

The next evening we made our way – with the help of our oldest son, who now lives there – down to the High Line Park area, arriving at the beginning of the “golden hour” light on an evening featuring wonderfully textured clouds. The Standard Hotel straddles the High Line – which, for those who may not know, is a narrow elevated park built on the structure of an old elevated railway. Here the cloud-filled sky is reflected in the windows of the hotel.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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keywords: new york, city, state, chelsea, manhattan, island, the, standard, hotel, windows, reflect, clouds, sky, architecture, building, geometry, pattern, perspective, blue, white, angle, high, line, elevated, park, usa, north america, urban, street, lower, west, side, stock

Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II (at B&H)
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM (at B&H) at 105mm
ISO 100, f/11, 1/50 second

G Dan Mitchell :: Aug.22.2010 :: Commentary, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street :: No Comments »

I spent last week in New York City doing a variety of things: photographing a couple nights of “Così fan tutte: Some Assembly Required,” exploring museums, eating a lot of wonderful food, visiting family, taking a personal tour of the B&H “superstore,” getting lost on the subway, and more. It has been a decade since I’ve been there, and this was my first chance to try to do photography in NYC. As many of you know, that is an almost overwhelming endeavor – there so much to see and do there that it is barely possible to skim the surface of the possibilities. But I tried. And some of the photographs will begin to appear here very soon.

G Dan Mitchell :: Aug.22.2010 :: Commentary, Locations, News, Site News :: No Comments »

I returned last night from a week-long visit to New York City. While this wasn’t just a photography visit, enough photography was part of the plan that I had to carry a reasonable amount of equipment. Typically I would bring along my Macbook, but this time I decided to leave the laptop at home and see if I could get by with just an iPad instead.

I knew that this would necessitate some compromises in the way I usually operate on the road. For example, serious photography applications like Photoshop and Lightroom simply don’t run on the iPad, so there would be no possibility of doing real post-processing work on the road. The iPad doesn’t have a “real” keyboard, instead providing an on-screen “virtual keyboard” – more on that below. On the positive side, the iPad is positively tiny compared to any real laptop. It makes my 13″ Macbook seem terribly bulky by comparison. The iPad slips easily into the external pocket of my Crumpler Eight Million Dollar Home camera bag, and doesn’t add enough weight to the package to be worthy of note. The battery life is tremendous and the charger is very small.

What follows is an early report on certain aspects of iPad use by the traveling photographer – or at least this mobile photographer. Continue Reading »

G Dan Mitchell :: Aug.21.2010 :: Commentary, Equipment, Ideas :: 11 Comments »

You might have noticed a bit more “creative spelling” than usual at the blog this week. A bit of explanation is perhaps in order. I decided to try traveling with my iPad rather than my laptop, trying to reduce the weight and bulk of my luggage, especially since I am carrying a significant amount of photo equipment. In most ways this is working out quite well – I can handle most email and web work with its virtual keyboard, and it really is great to be able to use such a small device.

But about that “keyboard?” the iPad has an on-screen “virtual keyboard” that pops up on the screen when you need to type. Unfortunately it provides exactly no tactile feedback. The software attempts to compensate by “interpreting” my error-filled typing and automatically replacing gibberish with actual words. But not always the most appropriate actual words. For example, in one post my attempt to type “other” resulted in the word “mother” appearing in the text!

What about using the iPad to review and post-process photographs? That will br the subject of a later post, I think. For now I’ll just say that it is possible… but less than idea. I did magneto do some very basic editing of a few photos that I posted elsewhere, but the real work will wait until I’m back at my desktop computer.

( Just for fun, I left an iPad-ism in that last paragraph – did you “manage to” find it?)

G Dan Mitchell :: Aug.18.2010 :: Commentary :: 3 Comments »

I’m in New York City for business and pleasure and to do some photography. It turns out that I am staying about a ten-minute walk from the renowned B&H Superstore. Since this blog is a B&H affiliate and because I had recently been in touch with someone from B&H, I mentioned to them that I would be in the area… and was invited to take a tour.

I am going to write more about this later when I can type on something other than my iPad “virtual keyboard,” but I thought I’d share a few things today.

We started in a building close to the one housing the well-known store. My guides took me through several areas that you might not think about – several floors teeming with employees handling the technical aspects of their online presence and other information systems, and a floor where customer support takes place. (As I understand it, support desks are staffed by people who have expertise in particular product areas.)

Next we took a short walk over to the store. I had been there briefly the day before with my son, but I had missed a lot since the two of us had headed straight to areas of the store focusing on our individual interests. Today’s tour showed me much of what I had missed – for example a very impressive video studio facility. (To my brother Ed who is a video guy… you have to see this!) The range of products available is remarkable, both in terms of the types of gear (video, audio, computers, and, of course, cameras and related equipment) and the levels of equipment available – at one information/demonstration booth you could ask about and handle a $99 point and shoot camera… or the $6000 DSLR body about two feet away. You can also see and handle just about any tripod made, and the same holds true for a large range of other products.

As I mentioned above,there is much more to write about this, but I’m going to save more for later. For now I’ll end by thanking Yechiel and Herschel for a very complete and informative tour!

G Dan Mitchell :: Aug.16.2010 :: Commentary :: 10 Comments »