Tag Archives: automobile

Photographs: Urban/Street

Orange F250

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A very orange Ford F250 pickup truck

Orange F250. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A very orange Ford F250 pickup truck.

This photograph is another from the little “orange exercise” that I and a few of my photographer friends engaged in around Halloween. The objects was to… photograph orange things. It turns out that this was a trickier task than I imagined. Because it was Halloween time, a lot of the potential orange subjects seemed a bit obvious. (Not that this entirely kept me from photographing pumpkins…) The surprise to me was that once I started looking for orange… the exact boundaries between orange and various other colors started to become fuzzy. I’d look at something that seemed orange, only to realize that in a different context it might be regarded as yellow or red or brown. There are objective facts about color, but our perception of it is highly subjective!

Having said that, there is no question in my mind that this truck is orange! I used to occasionally see cars painted in colors like this, but today mostly we see some pretty drab colors — generic white, black, gray, silver and similar. Even blue and green are less common than they once were. So this very orange truck caught my attention while I was out walking in the neighborhood. One more thing: perhaps, like me, if you stare at the shape of this vehicle long enough it may start to look really strange…

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” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Formerly Bob’s Auto Service

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Formerly Bob's Auto Service
A downtown garage in San Francisco

Formerly Bob’s Auto Service. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A downtown garage in San Francisco

I often walk past this business when I take the train to San Francisco to do street photography. My typical circuit has me doing some sort of walking loop to the north from the train station and then back by a different route. This shop is on a very busy intersection, squeezed into a small space. It looks like it has been there forever, and there is empirical evidence of this if you look closely.

These places fascinate me for a whole bunch or reasons which range from purely visual to questions about the story that might lie behind them. Visually, I’m challenged by trying to see some kind of shape and order in urban chaos, but I also like the sometimes wild layers of color on business that use it to gain visibility. In addition, especially on individual businesses that have been in a location for a while, elements appear that reflect ownership and/or management by individuals — as differentiated from the slick and ultimately uniform appearance of chains and be businesses. Here I love the hand-painted blue letters across the top of the building — they are not up to the “standards” of contemporary design, but they reflect someone’s great care in producing them. Below that, on the yellow panel above the garage, you can look closely and see the painted-out words that I used for the title of this photograph.

See top of this page for Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information and more.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

21 Choices

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21 Choices
A Pasadena street corner on a winter afternoon

21 Choices. Pasadena, California. January 6, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A Pasadena street corner on a winter afternoon

To some extent, although I’ll write a bit about it, this is one of those photographs that you’ll need to sort out for yourself. It may seem like a snapshot, or it may seem like something else, or it might seem like both.

Just after New Years Day we went to Southern California for a few days, driving down the Coast Highway (before the winter storms closed it) and then visiting areas at the northern and southern ends of the Los Angeles Basin. We stayed in Pasadena, a place I hadn’t visited for a while and one that I don’t know all that well, aside from the typical Californian’s knowledge of a place that comes from driving past on freeways. Because we had some unscheduled time we ended up wandering in downtown Pasadena a bit, and I had time to begin to get a bit of a feeling for the place, at least as it is in mid-winter light of the sort in this photograph.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: England, Photographs: Urban/Street

Balthazar, London

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Balthazar, London
Street scene, bakery, bar, and red car

Balthazar, London. London, England. August 5, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Street scene, bakery, bar, and red car

Here is another photograph in what I sometimes refer to at the “this-will-perplex-fans-of-my-landscape-photography” category. :-) The scene is a busy London street, photographed during a visit last August as we walked though this area. (If memory serves, we may have been on our way to a concert.)

In general, I’m not a fan of photographs that require too much explanation. That being said, I acknowledge that some photographs do require this… so here is a bit of explanation. You could look at this simply as a visual record of a place in the city. In fact, there is a bit of that here, since part of what got my attention was the red “Balthazar” awning above the bakery across the street, and my wonder at the use of the same name for a popular bakery in Manhattan. You can also try looking at the photograph simply as an image constructed of a limited range of colors (one in particular!) and forms, some of which may reveal surprises if you look closely. Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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