Tag Archives: blinds

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows

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Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows
Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows

Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows. San Jose, California. March 16, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late winter shadows fall across a suburban scene composed of a stucco wall, pipes, and a window

This is the second of two “walking around” photographs made in my neighborhood while wandering around with a camera and a couple of lenses. These walks are exercises in seeing, in several ways: When I carry the camera I pay a lot more attention to things around me that I would otherwise simply not see at all, and the process of looking and seeing photographs in places that are so mundane that I might regularly walk past them helps “tune up” my seeing skills.

As I often do, on this walk I was paying a lot of attention to shadows falling across the walls of buildings. As I write in my last photo post, once I started noticing the shadows, which are everywhere in this area, I began to see the buildings differently. For example, here is a building that I might otherwise have simply thought of as a tan building. But now it is a building with branches “painted” over almost its entire surface. And in this one, the branch shadows converge on the mundane little collection of faucets and wires and what-not at the lower left, then spread and open up to surround the white window frame above and to the right.

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: Abstract, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

My Kitchen Window

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My Kitchen Window
My Kitchen Window

My Kitchen Window. San Francisco Bay Area, California. March 16, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The view through blinds hanging outside my kitchen window.

Yup. My kitchen window. Why, you might wonder, did I make this photograph? I think there might be three reasons.

First, I’ve often said that I believe that I can find something to photograph within a few feet of anyplace I might find myself. A few photographer friends could tell you stories about me shooting from basically one spot for, on occasion, hours. Right now I’m recalling a meeting with a friend in Death Valley. We went to photograph a beautiful canyon area that I had overlooked and which she wanted to show me. We set up to shoot – I was on top of a small rise. As she ran around discovering this and that and the other fascinating thing, I continued to shoot from my original spot, perhaps for as long as an hour. It’s not that I don’t like to move. I can hike as well as the next photographer. But sometimes I can find so much in a small area that I don’t want to move. And I sure didn’t have to move much at all for this shot. I didn’t even have to leave the house!

Second, and speaking of house, there is a bit of a tradition among some photographers of making photographs in their immediately living environment. Here I’m thinking of a post from, if I recall, Cole Weston that I saw recently in which he shared photographs from seemingly mundane places… including his house and maybe even his bedroom. I believe that Huntington Witherill made the initial photographs for many of his beautiful digital manipulations of flowers in a spot in his home. And on and on. So, what the heck, a shot from my home. (Compared to these other photographers, I have to admit that my “home-grown” photographs have a way to go!)

Third, I had a new camera and I was anxious to try it out. The camera is a bit of a departure from the gear I usually use. (Typically I shoot with a full-frame DSLR system.) Because of some situations in which I want to travel and shoot light and fast, I decided to pick up a Fujifilm X-E1 along with a small set of lenses. This is a small mirrorless “rangefinder style” camera with similarly small lenses. (You can read more about the camera and my initial impressions here: “Fujifilm X-E1: From DSLR to Mirrorless. Hint: I like it.”) So this was probably just about the first photograph I made with that camera.

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: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Textures, Photographs: Urban/Street

Brick Wall, Pearl District

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Brick Wall, Pearl District
Brick Wall, Pearl District

Brick Wall, Pearl District. Portland, Oregon. May 25, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A brick wall with green windows and a small garden in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon

This is another photograph from my recent trip to Portland, Oregon. As car-free (and almost carefree) visitors to the city, we did a lot of walking, wandering more than once a day up and down between portions of the Pearl District and the downtown area where we were staying. Since I was carrying a very small and light camera on this trip (my Fujifilm X-E1) I was able to do a lot of “casual” photography of various things we saw on these walks.

There is quite a variety of buildings in and around the Pearl District, including many brick buildings. (To this California near-native, that seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but I digress…) They range from rather old structures to newer architecture seemingly intended to capture that old Portland semi-industrial/working class look. The subject of this photograph is simply the back wall of a large apartment building that we walked past on a partly cloudy and intermittently showery afternoon.

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.

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Person in Blue Shirt, Pigeon

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Person in Blue Shirt, Pigeon - A person in a blue shirt and a pigeon share a Stockton Street sidewalk in San Francisco.
A person in a blue shirt and a pigeon share a Stockton Street sidewalk in San Francisco.

Person in Blue Shirt, Pigeon. San Francisco, California. August 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A person in a blue shirt and a pigeon share a Stockton Street sidewalk in San Francisco.

Continuing my fascination with the walls of San Francisco buildings… this one is on Stockton Street just above China Town, and near the base of stairs descending from an overhead portion of the street under which Stockton continues through a tunnel. After I made this photograph I realized that I had also photographed it last year, from almost the same position and also with figures in front of it. But I decided that I like the subtle pigeon (perhaps hard to see in this small presentation) in front of the doorway, the guy in the blue shirt and shorts sauntering into the frame, and the fairly harsh front-lighting and shadows.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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.