Category Archives: Photographs: San Francisco

Events, Photographers, Photographs: People, Photographs: Photographers, Photographs: San Francisco

Arthur Tress, De Young Museum

March 11, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

: Photographer Arthur Tress speaks about his photography on March 9, 2012 at his exhibit at the De Young Museum, San Francisco.

Photographer Arthur Tress speaks about his photography on March 9, 2012 at his exhibit at the De Young Museum, San Francisco.

Last week I was fortunate to be among a small group of San Francisco Bay Area photographers invited by Adobe to attend an event at San Francisco’s De Young Museum in connection with the opening of “San Francisco 1964,” an exhibit of the photography of Arthur Tress. The exhibit includes a large selection of work which, as I understand it, Tress shot as a young man upon his arrival in San Francisco in 1964, the year when both the Republican Convention and the Beatles arrived in The City.

While Tress’s photographs are certainly interesting historically in that they capture many elements, both small and large, that characterize the visual nature of that time, they are also just plain wonderful photographs. Many capture odd and ironic juxtapositions of elements, others focus on the people watching the main events (civil rights demonstrations, etc) taking place in front of them – and some are simply touching recordings of individual people. (One of my favorites, among many, is a haunting but seemingly simple photograph of a young woman sitting at a table.)

If you are a Bay Area photographer or photography aficionado – or even a fan of the history of the Bay Area – I encourage you to visit the De Young to see this show. And, again, thanks to Adobe for giving me the opportunity to see the photographs and, even more, to hear Tress speak about his work. (This photograph of Tress is presented in black and white and in a square format – once you see his show you will understand why… ;-)

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: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco

San Francisco, Winter Evening

February 29, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Downtown buildings of San Francisco, California stand beneath a winter sky at dusk.

On New Year’s Day 2012, we joined a group of “photo walkers” who were shooting some of the old military structures high in the Marin Headlands area across the Golden Gate and north of San Francisco. After meeting up with all of them and photographing these interesting old sites, we left them as they went off to photograph Rodeo Beach. (We realized that we would need to get back home a bit earlier since my plan was to leave for six days in Death Valley the next morning… and I had not yet packed!)

Since we were already in the area, we took a quick detour up to the Hawk Hill area high on Conzelman Road to check out that famous view across the Golden Gate Bridge toward San Francisco and points beyond. I don’t go here every time I’m in the area, but if I’m already there, it is about to be sunset, I have an extra half hour, and there is the potential for interesting light… what the heck! Once we got there I noticed that some winter haze was distinctly softening the light as the sun was just about to set, and this created a beautiful glowing gradient of colors in the sky and washed the City in pastel light. In this photograph I resisted the temptation to pump things (contrast and saturation) a lot, and intend tried to maintain the subtle coloration of the scene.

Photographs: Night, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: People, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

America’s Pastime

January 2, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Baseball fans along the outer walkways of San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park, with scoreboard, commercial messages, and twilight sky.

This photograph comes from a couple of years ago, and is one that I “found” again recently during a scan though a half dozen or so years worth of old files. I tend to be rather cautious about deleting old files, but I finally decided that some of the older files really not worth keeping – and the side benefit of cleaning out some of the photographic cobwebs is that I often rediscover photographs that I had forgotten.

We go to a few San Francisco Giants games every season. While I like the baseball, other things also draw my attention. In addition to the garlic fries and beer (!), AT&T Park also provides a lot of interesting photographic opportunities. At some point during every game I tend to just wander around the facility and see what might make an interesting photograph. Most often I use the elevated vantage points around the park to photograph San Francisco and the Bay, but sometimes I also photograph subjects within the stadium, too.

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

Golden Gate Bridge and Lunar Eclipse

December 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The moon, in full lunar eclipse, passes behind the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is the second of two photographs of this week’s full lunar eclipse that I will share. The earlier one was a horizontal format version of roughly the same subject. Here the fully eclipsed setting moon passed behind the upper portion of the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, as seen from the San Francisco Bay shoreline in the Crissy Field area. There was just a bit of pre-dawn light in the sky at this point, and within a few minutes of making this photograph the combination of increasing ambient light, the generally hazy atmosphere, and the moon dropping into high, off-shore clouds brought the show to a fairly quick conclusion.

I was stunned by the number of other photographers out at this very early hour, even considering that it was within the city of San Francisco. I had originally tried Treasure Island, in the bay between San Francisco and Oakland. There were quite a few photographers lined up there at 5:00 a.m., but I did not like the potential positioning of the moon relative to likely foreground features near the horizon, so I didn’t stick around. Instead, I made a guess based on my knowledge of the area that there was a good chance that the moon might line up with the Golden Gate Bridge from vantage points in the Fort Mason, Crissy Field, and Fort Point areas. I drove over there quickly and was surprised to find the parking lots were nearly full and tripod-laden photographers walking about or already set up. I grabbed the first decent parking space, loaded up my gear, and started walking west, figuring that I could get to the likely spot on foot quite quickly.

A second surprise was that the ideal location, which wasn’t hard to find at all, was far less crowded than the areas closer to the parking lot. I was even able to find a spot or two where I could set up apart from other photographers and wait – for only a few moments by this time – for the moon to intersect with the bridge.

Another view of this subject in landscape orientation is posted here.

An interesting side note: Photographer Florian Kainz later shared his eclipse shot with me and asked if I might be the photographer standing in front of the bridge. Yes. That’s me! With Florian’s permission I have included a small version of his photo here – follow the links back to see his full-sized post at Flickr. He has given me permission to share his photograph here. Thanks, Florian!

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: San Francisco

Arthur Tress, De Young Museum

San Francisco, Winter Evening

America’s Pastime

Golden Gate Bridge and Lunar Eclipse

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