Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Flag Makers Building

May 16, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Flag Makers building behind a couple sitting on a bench at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Today (Saturday, May 14, 2016, as I write this) marks the re-opening of the newly renovated and expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA. As members we got an early look about a week ago, and we spent the better part of a day exploring the place. We like it! A lot. There are quite a few things I could write about — the architecture, the expanded space inside, the collections, the photographs — but all I’ll write for now is that I agree with one architecture critic who pointed out that where the old museum felt walled off from San Francisco the new version connects directly with the surrounding neighborhood, with many windows and open balconies providing plenty of opportunities to see and interact the urban San Francisco landscape. You could have a bit of fun thinking carefully about all of the lines and angles in this scene and what might explain them…

These photographs of SFMOMA are also some of the first I’ve made using a new camera from Fujifilm, the X-Pro2, about which I’ll likely have a lot more to say in the future. It is a rangefinder-style interchangeable lens mirrorless body with a hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder system that mostly succeeds in providing a sort of best of both worlds design. I like it for this kind of photography because the camera not only produced excellent image quality (with its 24MP sensor and fine Fujifilm lenses), but it is also small and fairly unobtrusive.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Rocks, Wave, Horizon

May 14, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Shoreline rocks, an incoming wave, and the Pacific Ocean horizon on a gray morning

I knew I wanted to photograph today, but the conditions in the Bay Area were perhaps less than inspiring, at least for the subjects I had initially thought to explore. It was a gray morning all up and down the coast and the high fog extended well inland, producing lots and lots of flat light. I stalled for a bit and then, after reading a weather forecast offering the hope of some breaks my late morning, I headed over the hills to the coast and began to work my way north from the Santa Cruz area. Some days the photographs just seem to appear almost of their own accord, but this was not going to be one of those days.

There are several ways to deal with this eventuality. One is, of course, to give up and go home — and, in truth, sometimes that is the most reasonable choice. There will always be another day with better conditions. A second option is to continue to look, holding out hope that something special will eventually happen. (I can tell plenty of stories of unpromising conditions that offered up astounding light surprises.) A third is to look for some completely different subject. For a moment today I thought about doing some urban photography. A fourth — and this may be the best in the long run — is to try to “see” the conditions as they are and find some way to photograph them, perhaps even going with the gray, so to speak. So that is what this photograph is — a very simple and quiet image that perhaps reflects the nature of this day.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Couple on Bench

May 9, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A couple sitting on a bench outside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

A couple of years ago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) closed for work on a major expansion and remodeling project. We have been members for some time, and I recall squeezing in one last visit before the long closure — viewing favorite works and making photographs inside the place. The big news is that the remodel is virtually finished now, and the museum officially reopens very soon, on May 14. But an opening like this doesn’t take place all at once. There is a sort of run-up to the actual event that brings people into the new facility over a period of time. As members, it was our turn (along with thousands of others) to get a preview this week.

I may have more to say about the museum in the future, but for now I’ll just say that I like it a lot — both the work exhibited (not that we saw all of it in one day!) and the building itself. There are a number of wonderful touches — many visual connections to the surrounding city (where the previous facility felt more walled off from San Francisco), lots of light, a brilliant system of stairways and spaces along the eastern side, and more. Oddly, almost none of that is in this first photograph I made at the new SFMOMA, which depicts an almost deserted new entrance and seems to show more of the surrounding city environment than the museum itself. More to come eventually…

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

Great Blue Heron

May 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great blue heron stands next to a Sacramento Valley pond

As I prepare photographs to share via social media (in my continuing photo-a-day marathon, now perhaps the years old) I often have photographs lined up for posting days or weeks in the future. Occasionally one sits here on the computer for a long time before I finally share it. This photograph of a great blue heron is such a photograph — I made it almost four months ago, way back when we were in the middle of winter!

This past winter I decided to expand the range of my bird photography a bit. I’ve been photographing winter birds in Central California for the past few years, but mostly in a range from roughly Sacramento south. So it was time to connect a few dots on the map and travel out of that area a bit. One of the first extended visits took me a good distance up the Sacramento Valley on a cold winter day when snow topped the mountains to both the east and west. This specimen was hanging out along an irrigation ditch near the edge of a wildlife refuge, and it allowed me to get relatively close (“hidden” inside a vehicle) without taking flight.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Flag Makers Building

Rocks, Wave, Horizon

Couple on Bench

Great Blue Heron

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