About

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

I use this site to post images "on the fly," along with information and observations. As sort of an "assignment to myself" I am attempting to post a new image almost every day. This forces me to seek out images I may have overlooked in my collection and to try to shoot more often. With that in mind, I don't expect every image to be brilliant, and neither should you. I try to post a short commentary on some images.
All photographs are © copyright G Dan Mitchell unless otherwise explicitly indicated. 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, my photo.net gallery 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 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 photos, developing the film, 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.

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 50mm f1.4) 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 and other subjects.

Dan

"DanAtPtLobos2005|12|27"
Dan Mitchell. Point Lobos. December 27, 2005. © Copyright Jameson Mitchell.