Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Love Window, China Camp

March 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Opaque window and door of a weathered wooden building at China Camp, California

There are any number of places with name “China Camp” (or similar variations), but this one is located along the shores of the northern San Francisco Bay. I’m not an expert on the history of the place by any means, but I understand that the village was established by immigrants from China in the 1800s and was, over a century ago, a thriving village of several hundred people who focused on harvesting shrimp. Today it is part of a California State park and can be a very quiet and peaceful place.

I visited for the first time this winter, along with a number of other photographers who went there as part of a “photo walk.” After photographing some nearby landscape subjects I walked over to the remaining buildings from the old village and spent some time poking around the area looking for photographs. While I think of this as a sort of ghost town, unlike some other such places in California, this one includes some modern improvements and restoration and even some museum facilities. I was intrigued by some windows and doors on the exterior of this wooden building, including this four-pane window on which someone had inscribed the word “love.”

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

Stairway and Broken Windows

March 19, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Exterior staircase, broken windows, and peeling paint on the wooden side panels of an abandoned building near Vallejo, California

I had joined up with a group of night photographers that I often shoot with on this evening, and we were sitting around in the late afternoon hours sharing pizza when someone made the radical suggestion of going out to shoot before darkness arrived! In the past, this has been just about the only group of photographers I’ve ever met who would stay inside during a San Francisco Bay area golden hour and sunset period, anxious for the light to go away so that shooting could begin! But on this evening, the radical concept of shooting in the daylight must have seemed so innovative that quite a few of us headed out to find either landscape-style shots over the San Francisco Bay or else abandoned and dilapidated industrial subjects nearby. I opted for the latter, and hoping to cover a bit more ground before dark, rather than walking nearby I drove, trying to figure out where I wanted to be in the fading light.

I ended up near this lonely, abandoned and partially destroyed building that has been left to vandals, who seem to be doing their best to accelerate the natural destructive forces that eventually take such buildings. Many windows are broken, there is spray paint in many places, and the exterior of the building is tremendously weathered and worn. Just a few minutes before sunset I made a series of exposures of this building, using a long lens to isolate smaller sections of the building. The sunset light turned the otherwise-dull building a much more intense shade of brown/yellow, and the brighter sky and clouds over San Francisco Bay are reflected in the broken windows. Soon after I finished shooting, the sun set, and I headed back to where my nocturnal friends awaited, and we headed out to photograph in the night.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese in Dusk Light

March 18, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Geese take off into the dusk sky above marshes, San Joaquin Valley, California

Yes. More geese. I photographed these on my New Year’s Day visit to the San Joaquin Valley with a group of fellow photographers and other folks with an artistic bent. We were out there to join the migratory birds in greeting the first sunrise of 2013. Joining us were many Ross’s geese, a heron or two, some egrets, thousands of geese, one flock of white pelicans, quite a large contingent of cranes, the odd coyote, and many others. We arrived early, photographed all morning, broke for a movie in a nearby town during the middle of the day, and returned to photograph until dark.

It is an interesting though challenging atmosphere on this day, one of those days that isn’t remarkable for extremes of weather or light – thick fog, brilliant sunrise light, etc. Instead, it was sort of gray in the morning with light fog and mostly very subtle colors at dawn. It never fully cleared, but near sunset the sky turned interesting colors of pink and purple and there was a last-minute bit of colorful light, as seen on the birds in this photograph. They had been settled in on a pond, but as the day ended they took off on the evening “fly out” to some other place. The lifted off in groups ranging from a few birds to a few hundred at a time and then mostly headed north or northwest. In this photo there is a close group that has just taken flight but beyond there are several other groups at varying distance that had left moments earlier. The result, as often seems to be the case with geese, is a sort of organized chaos. There are various ways to try to photograph this, but here I was trying to find instantaneous composition in which the various groups of birds aligned themselves, both within their groups and among the separate groups, in interesting ways.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Coyote On the Hunt, San Joaquin Valley

March 16, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A lone coyote in sunset light hunts in a winter field, San Joaquin Valley, California

If you are out and about much in my part of California, especially near the edges of the day, occasional encounters with coyotes are to be expected. I’ve had my share over the years. One of the most memorable, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago was when I was a very serious cyclist and out for a morning 50-miler south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Is I rode down a country road next to a steep hill, a coyote suddenly flew (almost literally!) down the slope and landed on the road just feet in front of me. I’m not sure who was the most surprised or panicked at this development, but my memory of the event has the coyote doing an immediate 180 degree turn and racing back up against the hill just before we collided. On other occasions I’ve seen them at a distance or I’ve been hiking along only to look up and see one very close by.

Even though I knew that they inhabit this place, where we were photographing migratory birds in the San Joaquin Valley, coyotes were pretty much the last thing on my mind when another member of my group said, more or less, “look behind you!”. I shooting over the top of my car and photographing geese in developing golden hour light, so I turned around – now using the car as a back-rest rather than as a blind! – and simply tracked the animal as it made its lazy way along the field on the other side of a drainage ditch. I made no attempt to conceal myself – it would have been pointless – and the coyote barely seemed to care as it went about its evening hunt, crossing slowly in front of me and eventually disappearing into tall brush to my right.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Love Window, China Camp

Stairway and Broken Windows

Geese in Dusk Light

Coyote On the Hunt, San Joaquin Valley

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.