Studio Nocturne — 2020 ArtSpan Open Studio

I am participating in the 2020 San Francisco Artspan Open Studio event as a member of Studio Nocturne, a group of night photographers who have exhibited together at this annual event for two decades.

If you can’t connect to me via the ArtSpan BoothCentral video chat, please text me at 408-504-3266 or email to dan@gdanmitchell.com and I’ll get right back to you. I’ll monitor both during the Gray open studio event.

The event is on Thursday, October 1 between 4:00pm and 8:00pm. (You may feel free to contact me outside of that period, too.) I’ll share more details, links, and more photographs here as the date approaches.

In addition to the photographs featured on this page, there is a large archive of other photographs of a wide variety of subject both at this website and at my online archival gallery — and virtually all are available as prints and for licensing.

So that you can “start with the art” I have moved a lot of the explanatory material to the bottom of this page.

Open Studio Featured Photographs

I am featuring the following photographs for the 2020 ArtSpan Open Studio event. Each is available in several size.s (An italicized listing indicates the featured print, and other sizes are available by request including some not listed here. Pricing here is for prints mounted in high quality metal frames — contact me for information on unframed prints.)

An Old Pier, Night

I made this photograph a few years ago at night in very dim lighting,tand these old pilings beneath a ship yard pier were reflected in the smooth water, made even smoother by the effects of a long exposure. The location is an old ship yard on the San Francisco Bay where naval ships were built and maintained for may decades, starting way back in the 1800s. The place was decommissioned in the 1990s and its character has grade;;u changed since then, though you can still find remarkable historical structures if you poke around a bit.

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Yellow Buildings, Shadows, Moving Clouds

I had long wanted to photograph these buildings. While photographing nearby I noticed that translucent clouds were passing overhead. When such clouds are lit from below they can form very interesting patterns during long exposures. The clouds were moving away and to the right, so I had to work quickly before they disappeared.

Open Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in black metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $499

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Building 106, Night

I was first attracted by some nearby tall structures that look like they might be some sort of industrial hoppers or collection equipment. I turned up this side alley where nearby artificial lights illuminated the terribly weathered metal walls of old factory buildings, rising from the small one at right, past the taller building just beyond, and culminating that the much taller building near the upper portion of the frame, with its large pipe that must have carried smoke or gas away from its room. This photograph is, in a way, about rectangles and it can be viewed as an abstract construction built of that form.

Open Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in black metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $499

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Hotel, Narrow Street (Firenze, Italy)

Out for an afternoon walk on our last full day in Florence, Italy a few years ago, we kept walking as night arrived. I can’t remember precisely where I made this photograph, though it was not far from the Duomo. There were a lot of people out walking on this warm evening, and many ottos my her photographs of this street included pedestrians and cyclists, but they thinned out momentarily as a photographed this deserted view with the street winding past the backwards “hotel” sign and then curving out of view.

Open Studio featuring the Size B 11.25″ x 15″ framed print

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Ice Cream Shop, Paris

I made this photograph on the first night of a visit to Paris. We arrived from London in the afternoon, found our hotel, took a few minutes to get our bearings, and then went for a walk — coffee first, then a bit of wandering and sight-seeing, then dinner, then a bit more wandering that included after-dark photography in the streets of Montmartre. We ate outside as the sun set and twilight came on, and from our table I watched this small ice cream shop across the street. The colors were wonderful, especially with lighted display cases that alternated red, green, blue, purple, yellow and other lights. I decided I would try to photograph it when we left our restaurant, and I caught it at the moment when the only remaining customers were the two people sitting at the table outside.

Open Studio featuring the Size B 11.25″ x 15″ framed print

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Je Suis Bleu (Paris)

Walking somewhere in Paris we passed through an area of narrow streets, shops, old buildings and graffiti. Near a corner I saw this example of street art. By itself a photograph of it would not be much more than a record, but I stopped and waited to see who might walk into the frame. A bicycle and a scooter passed, along with a few solo walkers, but nothing too special. Then I saw the two women and the young girl coming up the street and I thought they looked interesting. It was my lucky day — they stopped briefly just to the left of the figures on the wall and two of them turned back to my right to look at something, creating a moment sense of tension.

Open Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in silver metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $499

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Man in White, Mosco Street (NYC)

It was Christmas Eve in New York City. It was time for dinner, so we head to Chinatown, where there is a restaurant we’ve visited before. We arrived to find that the wait is “at least an hour and a half.” As someone later said, “The cat is out of the bag.” We quickly figure out that most of the other nearby restaurants are nearly as crowded, so we decide to walk a few blocks to a Vietnamese place. As we walk down Mosco Street a cook takes a break on the sidewalk, lit by the light spilling out of the door to the kitchen.

Open Studio featuring the Size B 11.25″ x 15″ framed print

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Star Trails, The Manifold, Zabriskie Point

By the time I arrived at this iconic Death Valley location in the evening the moon was just coming up over the mountain range to the east, with its light at times filtering through high clouds. During the hour I was there I made three exposures, working with almost no one else around. With exposure times in the 8 to 12 minute range and followed by “dark frame exposures” of equal length, this was a slow and quiet process.

Open Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in black metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $499

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Night Street, Florence (Firenze, Italy)

In the summer, central Florence is a very busy place, filled with tourists during most of the daytime hours. However, there were two times of the day when I could walk and photograph in relatively crowd-free conditions: early in the morning and late enough in the evening that the crowds had thinned. By the time I walked past this street, in a place where there would have been a good number of people earlier in the day, it was essentially deserted.

Open Studio featuring the Size B 11.25″ x 15″ framed print

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Los Banos Donuts

Each time I’ve passed through this town for several years, typically before dawn or well after sunset, I noticed the place and made a mental note to stop and photograph it in the dark, its big red DONUTS sign and glowing interior lights calling out in the darkness. But since I was usually in a hurry to get somewhere — a destination to the east or else back home — it was quite a while before I finally stopped. I pulled over and stopped briefly in a parking lot across the street and made a few exposures. I thought the pickup truck was an appropriate touch in this Central Valley community

Size A: 6″ x 12″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 9″ x 18″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 12″ x 24″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 18″ x 36″ print in frame — $775

Ship Yard Buildings, Crane

This photograph is an example of several things that intrigue me about photographing at night. Scenes that might seem mundane in “normal” daylight are transformed at night. Not only do many distractions simply disappear, but the light itself, especially in areas with varied artificial illumination, transforms these subjects. In many places LED lights have replaced the wild mix of tungsten, fluorescent, sodium vapor, and other sources today — an unfortunate development in the visual sense, as LED light is more or less like daylight. But in places like this, the colors of the light become intense. Here it is the exceedingly green light of a large work light that predominates. Another appealing aspect of night photography is that it lets me make photographs of things that I really can’t see with my own eyes. In the ambient lighting I could only barely see the details of this scene. But with a long exposure there is enough light to reveal features that I could not see at all, a pure example of “seeing what the camera sees.”

Open Studio featuring the Size B 11.25″ x 15″ framed print

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Asian Styles

A few years ago I made an important “discovery during a trip to Manhattan” — with newer cameras I can photograph at high enough ISOs that it is possible to do handheld night street photography. Since I use a small mirrorless camera for street photography, I can do this without carrying around a big camera and lenses. I’ve long been a night photographer, but generally working more or less the same way I approach landscape photography, but with longer exposures. Much longer! This new development is tremendously liberating — I can walk around and spontaneously respond to what I see, and I can capture brief and ephemeral moments in the wild and beautiful light of the urban night. This photograph exemplifies one way that I’ve always shot street photography, though now adapted to the night. I begin by finding an interesting bit of urban landscape — buildings, light, color, texture, form. I find a composition that will work… and then I wait.

OpeOpen Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in silver metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $49

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Moonlit Stairway, Wall, and Window

This photograph was made in extremely dark conditions at the bottom of a dark stairway next to a dark building in a dark corner of the historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard using only moonlight. Did I mention that it was very dark? The exposure ended up being very close to eleven minutes long, and even this was barely long enough. It was so dark that it was necessary to imagine portions of the subject that could not be seen except by the camera.

Open Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in black metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $499

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Building with Green Windows Under Moonlight

Although this seems like a quiet and still photograph, I had only a brief moment to make it. The exterior of this industrial building is illuminated by the light of the full moon. The interior was lit by garish and very bright fluorescent bulbs. The contrast between the types of lighting was striking, so I set up and managed to make a single exposure before the interior lights were turned off.

Open Studio Special
18″ x 24″ print in black metal frame at the 15″ x 20″ price of $499

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

Two Islands, Fog

Size A: 8.25″ x 11″ print in frame — $199
Size B: 11.25″ x 15″ print in frame — $299
Size C: 15″ x 20″ print in frame — $499
Size D: 21″ x 28″ print in frame — $775

I showcase night photographs during the Studio Nocturne Open Studio. They range from natural landscapes to long-exposure photographs of industrial sites to street photography done a night in cities in the US and Europe. (I’m not only a night photographer, and a few daytime images may appear here, too.)

The work I present during the Open Studio primarily consists of limited-edition framed prints. I do my own printing in-house on archival-grade inkjet papers. Prints are signed and numbered and corner-mounted under window mats before being placed in metal frames with UV-resistant glazing.

Edition Sizes
35 prints in size A
25 prints in size B
20 prints in size C
10 prints in size D
10 prints total in sizes E & F combined
100 total prints

(Please see this page for more information about my prints, including an explanation of the differences between limited edition and open edition prints.)

Online transactions — You may purchase using your credit card. I’ll need your email address so that I can send you an invoice via Square (or possibly PayPal) who will process the credit charge. The charge will include the price of the item plus California sales tax. We’ll discuss the time frame and method for delivery before processing. Shipping in the continental USA is included in the purchase price, and I may be able to deliver in person to some Bay Area locations.

Contact G Dan Mitchell for further information: dan@gdanmitchell.com.