Category Archives: Photographs: Structures and Objects

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

Shoreline, Abandoned Dock, Morning

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Shoreline, Abandoned Dock, Morning
Shoreline, Abandoned Dock, Morning

Shoreline, Abandoned Dock, Morning. San Francisco Bay, California. June 13, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An abandoned dock stands along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay in morning light

Things have been very busy recently, limiting my time to go out and shoot. For some time I’ve been looking forward to another of my periodic “personal photo walks” in San Francisco, and I finally had the chance today. My routine is to get up very early and catch a Caltrain to the City, arriving there no later than 7:00 AM. This is a bit before the crowds arrive, and early enough that there is still a lot of good light around. The good light is especially likely long the San Francisco Bay waterfront, where it shine toward the City from across the bay, often through mist or fog and always reflecting on the water.

This time I explored around the fringes of the Mission Bay area. This was formerly a pretty run down location, with lots of empty lots and some abandoned structures. However, recent urban development has come, and many of the formerly empty areas are now construction sites or the sites of very new and recently occupied buildings. I walked past these and looped over towards the waterfront, where some areas are surprisingly “unimproved,” at least so far. Here I found the remnants of several old piers that have been left to decay and gradually tumble into the bay. In this photograph I shot straight into the morning sun, silhouetting the rotting wood, and composing the scene to include a bit of a working pier to the left and a couple of tankers anchored out in the bay beneath the thinning fog bank.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Building 237, Evening

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Building 237, Evening
Building 237, Evening

Building 237, Evening. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on Building 237 at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California

This is one of a pair of buildings that has featured in several of my night photographs at the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, where I’ve been photographing after dark for about a decade now. The location is the site of the former and now historic naval ship yard that was the first on the west coast of the United States, being established way back in the 1800s. It was decommissioned in the 1990s, and since that time the facility changed in many ways. Parts of the island are now open space, others have been turned into urban developments, businesses and others are using some of the old buildings and spaces—yet parts of the facility have been retained as a sort of informal historic site.

The buildings in the cluster of which this one is a part are very close to the “historic core” of the ship yard. Although many of the buildings give the appearance of being abandoned, some are in use and all are kept in a sort of state of suspended animation. Almost all of my photography here has been at night, when a diversity of light sources transform it in magical ways. During the day, much of it can seem quite mundane. Buildings that are wildly colorful when lit by brilliantly colorful sodium vapor lights and other colorful light sources often turn out to be quite drab in the day time. On this visit I managed to arrive before sunset, and I headed out to see if the golden hour light might offer some opportunities for a different sort of visual transformation of these buildings, and this one was photographed during the final few minute of daylight.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Mining Relic, Death Valley

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Mining Relic, Death Valley
“Mining Relic, Death Valley” — A piece of rusted and weathered metal from an abandoned mining site, Death Valley National Park

Between having our sunrise light interrupted by an incoming storm (though it was not a compete washout) and retreating from the road past the charcoal kilns in heavily falling snow, we stopped for a while at the old Harrisburg site, where Harris and Aguereberry ran a mine for a number of years. (They reportedly didn’t get rich, but they also avoided going bust—the story is that they extracted enough ore to make it work.)

Calling the place “Harrisburg” is over-selling it! There is a small cluster of cabins—three, to be precises—tucked up into a slight indentation at the base of a low hill in a high, broad Panamint Range valley.The mine is found at the far end of the hill and around its far side, and a variety of mining detritus litters the landscape: remnants of old rails leading into the mine, some impressive scaffolding, lots of rusted stuff, an old abandoned vehicle. As we poked around near the mine I found this old hunk of weathered sheet metal hanging from some wooden structures.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

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

Red Industrial Buildings

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Red Industrial Buildings
Red Industrial Buildings

Red Industrial Buildings. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. April 5, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Red industrial buildings, one of brick and the other of painted metal, at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard

Almost all of my photographs of the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California were made at night. This has been my primary and frequent subject for night photography over a period of about a decade. I typically show up there at the very end of the day and go straight to the locations where I’ll shoot in darkness, and most often I don’t even really look for photographs much when there is light. There have been a few exceptions, mostly when I have arrived a bit early. I have a few golden hour photographs from the upper end of the island where there are a number of very dilapidated old buildings, and a few years ago I once photographed one of the industrial streets at sunset.

This time I was there with my friends from the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group, The Nocturnes, who were gathering for an “alumni night” event. Since daylight savings had begun recently, it seemed like our schedule was off a bit, and we had finished all of the pre-night-photography events an hour before sunset! So I went out with camera and tripod and made a few photographs of non-night subjects. Many areas on the island seem a bit plain in daylight once you have seen their appearance under the varied illumination found here at night. The night light can turn a boring tan building into a structure of bright yellow or green, with shadows playing over its surface. I decided to look mostly for textures, shape, and color as I walked around in the brighter light, and these buildings, with their combination of metal and brick walls, red colors from bricks and peeling paint, and angles of roof lines seemed like an interesting subject.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.