Tag Archives: bright

Three Ivy Leaves

Three Ivy Leaves
Three spring ivy leaves emerge from the shadows.

Three Ivy Leaves. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.

Three spring ivy leaves emerge from the shadows.

Ivy is among a group of (sometimes) shade-loving plants whose leaves intrigue me. The shapes, colors, and textures are immediately appealing, especially in soft light. But the complexity of their arrangement can make it difficult to find compositions. The beauty of the leaves makes me think it will be easy, but the complexity challenges me.

Here a few newer leaves stood out a bit from the darker background leaves — both because of their newness and because they were a bit forward and in the light.


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

Reflecting Sidewalk

Reflecting Sidewalk
Brilliant winter sunshine on an urban Manhattan sidewalk.

Reflecting Sidewalk. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Brilliant winter sunshine on an urban Manhattan sidewalk.

This photograph comes from an earlier winter visit to New York City back in 2019. Those were the days! Despite the cold (quite severe cold, actually) we bundled up and went out on foot every day to explore and photograph and eat and drink and mingle in the crowds. When we weren’t walking we took the subway almost everywhere. The streets back then — in the before times when “covid” was not part of our vocabulary — were packed with people in the familiar New York style.

Offhand, I do not recall exactly where I made this photograph, though I do recall a bright, sunny morning and being distracted by the bright reflection of light on the sidewalk and by the combinations of lines (from the sidewalk itself and from shadows) and curves as the walkway wound into the distance in a place that was momentarily uncrowded.


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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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.

Trees in Morning Sun

Trees in Morning Sun
Silhouetted trees in brilliant morning sunlight along the shore of a Yosemite Wilderness lake.

Trees in Morning Sun. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Silhouetted trees in brilliant morning sunlight along the shore of a Yosemite Wilderness lake.

This is another photograph from the Sierra Nevada that seems place-specific only in the most general sense. You can find similar scenes of trees and boulders along the edge of countless lakes and ponds in the range. If you explore them in the early morning or late in the day you are bound to end up looking into this brilliant light and perhaps shielding your eyes in the shadows of one of the trees.

This particular scene is in the Yosemite backcountry at just such a lake — a moderate-sized body of water nestled among trees interspersed with the ubiquitous granite boulders left behind by glacial action. It can produce a complex and detailed scene, but one with a definite sense of order once you see it. Beyond the physical reality of such places, I always thing of the sensations that accompany a walk through this terrain — the careful steps over and around boulders, climbing over the fallen snags, the contrast between cool air and intense sunlight, and perhaps the sound of water along the shore.


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

Point Sur, December Sky

Point Sur, December Sky
High clouds, brilliant reflecting light on the water, and fog at Point Sur.

Point Sur, December Sky. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High clouds, brilliant reflecting light on the water, and fog at Point Sur.

There is a lot of “accepted wisdom” about photography that turns out to be not quite true when you stop and consider your actual picture-making experience..Yesterday I was having a conversation with a photographer friend (Hi, Charlie!) about various things, including the way that some photographs don’t quite make sense to us until we return to them long after making the original exposure. If one ideal is to pre-visualize the photograph perfectly (and I do believe in the value of pre-visualizing), then it would seem that being surprised months or years later to find that a forgotten image works is hard to explain. But it happens — quite a lot, actually. One of my ideas about this is that at first we are too invested in what we believe the photograph to be that we are unable to look beyond that and see what it actually is.

All of this is a long way of getting to a point about this photograph. When I first viewed it right after the day I visited the Big Sur coast, I had a hard time with certain aspects of the light and the color and, to a lesser extent, the way it was framed. Originally I settled on a black and white interpretation. (Yes, a neat way of copping out about the color issues!) Recently I went back and looked at it again, and this is the result. I ended up with a slightly different crop, some work to lighten portions of the scene, and some new thinking about color of clouds and sky and about how to handle the bright yet low contrast reflections on the water out near the horizon.


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 | Flickr | FacebookEmail

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

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.


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