Category Archives: Photographs: Structures and Objects

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Low Water, San Luis Reservoir

November 25, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Low water at the San Luis Reservoir, Autumn

California is currently in the third of three years of historically bad drought conditions. Water is power in the state — and a lot of politics has gone on around the acquisition of water, the use (and misuse) of water, and the construction of water projects. I’ve lived in the state long enough to have been in the valley now filled by this huge reservoir before it was filled. I have a faint memory of traveling across the valley bottom in a car with my dad at the wheel, looking at things that he told me were soon to be submerged — I have a specific recall of a bit of roadway and a bridge. That valley is long gone now, having been filled by the late 1960s.

The reservoir is an unusual one. The water it holds is pumped up into the reservoir from below and stored from year to year, producing some electrical power when the water flows back down from the reservoir to the valley. Essentially, water goes both directions though the dam! At the end of this third drought year the water level is extremely low — as low as I recall seeing it — and some of the huge structures at the dam are well above the water line. This is partly a photograph of those structures, partly a record of a phase in California’s water crisis, and partly a juxtaposition of angles and surfaces and curves, all under beautiful hazy late-autumn California light.

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: Chicago, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Downtown Chicago Buildings, Morning

October 26, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light on dense downtown buildings, Chicago, Illinois

This is yet another photograph made from the architecture boat tour of downtown Chicago. At one point the boat head out toward the mouth of the river, where the water widens. Here the boat turns around and provides the most open and distant view of waterfront buildings. (During much of the rest of the tour the river passes very close to most buildings, so one is aiming almost straight up at them in many cases.)

The kind of view in this location and in this photograph is actually a bit rare when photographing big cities — a view from just enough distance and one that is not blocked by closer buildings. The greater distance reduces the issues of converging perspective lines and also allows more buildings to be included in the photograph, as here where more than half a dozen overlapping buildings fill the frame.

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Textures and Reflections

October 5, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Detail of a Chicago riverfront building with distorted window reflections

As is the case with a number of the Chicago photographs that I made during our August 2014 visit to the Windy City, this one was made from a boat on the Chicago River. We rarely do “tourist things” when we visit cities, usually preferring to look for more interesting stuff, but everyone we know who had been there recommended the Chicago architecture boat tours, so we gave in and took one. I have to say that it was worth it — the tour combines an intense overview of a lot of downtown Chicago architecture, a lot of background information on the structures and the development of the city, and a unique view that isn’t really available in any other way.

There is almost too much to see on the tour, since Chicago’s downtown is dense with interesting features large and small, and the boats don’t pause to let you gawk! So I photographed a lot, trying to vary my focus between the large and impressive downtown buildings and smaller details down closer to the river. This photograph falls into that second category, and is “about” the shapes and textures of the bit of a more modern building and the very deformed reflections in its windows.

Photographs: Chicago, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Streetlamp, Bridge, Buildings

September 14, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Elements of downtown Chicago architecture

And now, a new subject for me: Chicago. I had been there before, but on other business, such as attending conferences in the downtown area, but this August was my first opportunity to photograph there. Midway through our train trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City, we paused in Chicago for a couple of days. I can’t say that I “know” Chicago yet, but I can say that I’m starting to understand and like the place. (Though our impressions may have been skewed more than a bit by being there while the streets were filled with “Lallapaloozers.”)

From this and earlier visits, I’ve come to partly think of Chicago as being like New York, but with more space and light. I think that this is one reason that I found myself so often photographing juxtapositions of Chicago’s tall buildings and the way light and reflections play across them — the larger space between them and the more open light make this possible. This photograph was made from a boat (the “architecture tour,” if you wondered) as it passed beneath of the many bridges across the Chicago River. The basic elements of the photograph – a bridge, a street lamp, and the surfaces of tall buildings — seem to characterize the place for me.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Structures and Objects

Downtown Chicago Buildings, Morning

Textures and Reflections

Streetlamp, Bridge, Buildings

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