Stone Steps. San Francisco, California. May 29, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Stone steps in front of a San Francisco building

I sometimes wonder how it is that I enjoy such different photographic subject. Photographing natural subjects seems so different from photographing the constructed world of the city. In some ways, shooting in the urban landscape exercises different parts of my visual system than shooting in the natural world, and it encourages me to photograph in ways I might not try much in my landscape photograph. To some extent I always regard photography as a kind of hunting, and I’m on the prowl for things that are visually interesting. Those are available in abundance in the city, especially when it comes to interesting geometries and wild colors. In the city I virtually always work on foot and without a tripod, quickly spotting and photographing subjects and then moving on. The quickness of the work fine tunes my ability to see.

There was no particular plan that took me here this time — I was following a relatively random route across The City, dictated by whims, which direction had the green light, and whatever seemed interesting. Starting at the CalTrain station, I worked my way along the Embarcadero and then heading up Market before cutting north and following a wandering route through Chinatown (studiously avoiding Grant), though part of North Beach and then nearly to the touristy Fisherman’s Wharf area. I have walked past and photographed this building before, and I may have even photographed the steps, though in a very different way.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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