Category Archives: Photographs: Architecture

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden

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Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden - A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.
A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.

Walkway, Lan Su Chinese Garden. Portland, Oregon. July 2, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A covered walkway at the Portland Chinese Garden.

After our recent stay in Portland, Oregon, I understand that there is more to the city than beer. Though don’t overlook the beer… ;-) Portland seems to be a city of gardens, at least in the central portion where we spent most of our visit. This may be redundant, but there are beautiful gardens of all types and in a variety of places. We visited nearly a half-dozen, even though that wasn’t the primary goal of our trip. (And, no, it wasn’t the beer, either. But that did figure in our plans, too.)

On this day we were walking around portions of the downtown area, mostly south of the main downtown center. In the afternoon we decided to head north and east a bit and walk into Portland’s Chinatown area. It is a much different place than the more compressed and more touristy Chinatown of San Francisco. Our main goal was the Lan Su Chinese Garden. This garden is a beautiful little marvel, located in an area where you might not expect to find such a thing. Although it occupies a very small downtown block, there is much to see inside, especially if you walk slowly and look carefully. At one point I imagined what it might be like to be in such a place alone, so I made a point of trying to make a few photographs that didn’t include other visitors, such as this black and white photograph of a covered walkway winding along an edge of the garden.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Two Bushes , San Francisco Home

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San Francisco Photograph - Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.
Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.

Two Bushes, San Francisco Home. San Francisco, California. July 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two bushes grow along the sidewalk in front of an urban San Francisco home.

I can’t say with certainly just where in San Francisco I photographed this building, though I think it may have been in the North Beach neighborhood. To me it seemed like a superficially very simply building that turns out to be a lot more complex, and a just plain interesting example of a lot of surprising juxtapositions of shape and color.

Everything initially seems almost boringly “square” – the shapes on the garage door, the sections of the sidewalk in front of the garage, the abrupt and jutting shape of the upper story extension that leans out over the front entrance and the garage, the odd little window at the upper left, and the two symmetrically placed bushes in front of the garage and the front door. But with a little bit closer look, certain things seem to be off just a bit. Someone must have faced a difficult decision when the bushes grew too tall – whether to chop off the top of the one on the right and maintain the symmetry, or to instead let that one drop, throwing off the even balance – and doesn’t the one on the left sort of seem like the unruly brother of the one on the right?

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay

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Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay - Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.
Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.

Two Bridges and Fog, San Francisco Bay. San Francisco, California. July 14, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning fog floats above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and Yerba Buena Island.

This is certainly not a unique viewpoint for photographing the Golden Gate (and the bridge named after it) and the rest of San Francisco Bay… but I keep returning anyway. While the principal physical elements of the scene – Marin headlands, bridge, the City, bridges, Yerba Buena Island, the East Bay – the conditions of light and atmosphere change constantly. The variations in the fog alone could be the subject of a book, I’m sure! It can come from the west (summer) or the east (winter), it can be high or low (or both at once!), thin or thick, opaque or luminous, static or moving quickly, illuminated by sun or by artificial light at night, and more.

On this morning it was a combination of several of those. There was a sort of thin fog/haze at the lower levels, but the thicker fog was quite high, above the bridge towers and even a bit above my position in the Marin headlands. The fog was beginning to break up, starting to the east and gradually moving westward toward the coast, and when I made this photograph large beams of diffused light were coming through the fog deck and lighting areas around the San Francisco waterfront and even on the bay waters. Lining up the elements of the photograph wasn’t terribly hard once I found the composition I liked, but then I waited for boats for move into or out of the frame (see a large freighter passing between towers of the distant Bay Bridge) and for the light to appear in (as close to) the right places (as one can hope for).

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Wooden Door, Concrete Wall

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Wooden Door, Concrete Wall - A wooden door in a concrete wall in an alley along The Embarcadero, San Francisco.
A wooden door in a concrete wall in an alley along The Embarcadero, San Francisco.

Wooden Door, Concrete Wall. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A wooden door in a concrete wall in an alley along The Embarcadero, San Francisco.

I’ll keep this description short since the photograph was taken in a location and circumstances that I have already described more fully. While walking along the Embarcadero on the waterfront of San Francisco I came across some alleys that had been locked up in the past and this time found them open. So I wandered down the alleys toward the water and discovered some old industrial buildings with worn doorways and walls and decided to make some photographs.

Much of this area is undergoing renovation or else being reclaimed by firms that find the slightly old-fashioned and dilapidated buildings to be picturesque and perhaps a bit trendy. Side by side with modern companies and offices there are remnants of a much different and rougher past.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.