Tag Archives: boarded up

Pizza Jack’s No. 2

Pizza Jack's No. 2
The dilapidated Pizza Jack’s No. 2 storefront, San Jose, California.

Pizza Jack’s No. 2. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

The dilapidated Pizza Jack’s No. 2 storefront, San Jose, California.

Perhaps there was once pizza at Pizza Jack’s No. 2, but it looks like those days are gone. Though the string of holiday lights along the roof seems sort of festive — perhaps left over from a previous year? The building is in an “interesting” area of town, one that exists between better neighborhoods in one direction and lots of urban redevelopment in the other. This area is one with a lot of potential, but also a lot of abandoned and run-down stuff that probably won’t be here much longer.

This may end up being an unusual example of a photograph that I’ll release in both color and monochrome versions. For obvious reasons, I was thinking “color!” when I made the photograph, but in post it became clear that it also works in monochrome, though with a rather different effect. There’s an old adage about going to black and white in photographs where the color doesn’t tell the story. Here, color does tell at least one important story, but darned if it doesn’t work without the color, too.


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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Green Door, Evening

Green Door, Evening
A weathered green door, a green wall, a sidewalk — evening light.

Green Door, Evening. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

A weathered green door, a green wall, a sidewalk — evening light.

First, a brief description of the photography, and then another reason that I am posting it today. I made the photograph on one of my daily walks — I try to get out and cover various routes in a radius of a couple of miles or so that add up to between 3 and 5 miles on a typical day. I always carry a camera, even though I don’t take it out on most of the walks. I’ve been past this old building quite a few times, but today I saw this door for the first time, so I stopped to photograph its worn and tilting form.

The other reason this photograph is here is that it comes from what is for me a photography tradition: the process of getting up to speed on a new camera. I usually avoid upgrading cameras too frequently. There are many reasons, but one is that I depend upon knowing a camera’s interface to the point where operation is intuitive. But eventually I do get new cameras. This was the first walk with the new Fujifilm XT5, which is going to replace the (fine) XPro2 that I’ve been using since that camera was introduced. I won’t go into the technical details at this point, but so far I’m liking the camera a lot.


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.

Blog | About | Twitter | Flickr | FacebookEmail

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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

Building 631, Mare Island

Building 631, Mare Island
Building 631, Mare Island

Building 631, Mare Island. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. February 6, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Building 631, with badly peeling paint and illuminated by garish artificial lighting, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California.

For some reason I often find myself down around the old power plant and in the alley next to Building 631 near the end of my nighttime shoots at Mare Island. The railroad tracks curve through this alley – though they aren’t particularly visible in this photograph – and the bizarre and garish light and grossly peeling paint on this wall seem different from many of the other subjects around here.

One of the fun things about this sort of night photography is that “white balance” is more or less impossible! This scene includes light sources ranging from some kind of bizarre blue-green lighting that I can’t identify (fluorescent?) to sodium vapor to tungsten to sky lit by the glow from Vallejo, across the bay from the island. When it comes to the right color balance… pick one! Or several! Or make one up! In the end, no matter what you choose it won’t really “look like” what you saw in the dead of night – but for me that isn’t really the object. Long-exposure night photography lets us reveal things that we cannot see with our own eyes and present them in ways that are imaginative and different from our usual reality.

This photograph is 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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Raccoons and Brick Wall, Mare Island

Raccoons and Brick Wall, Mare Island

Raccoons and Brick Wall, Mare Island. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. August 30, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of nocturnal raccoons emerges from beneath a brick wall with boarded up windows and doors at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.

I’ll have to admit that wildlife photography was more or less the furthest thing from my mind when I was shooting this scene of an artificially lit weathered brick wall in the core of the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near the end of August. The thing that interested me in this shot was the shape of the pipe attached to the outer wall of this building against the bricks, along with the way it snaked between various windows and doors. So I set up the tripod and made a couple exposures. While making the second one I suddenly thought I saw something move – which seemed completely unexpected. Although it was much darker that it appears in this shot, I eventually saw a furry shape emerging from a gap between the sidewalk and the building… and then another…and another. Eventually there may have been as many as a half dozen raccoons in this little cluster of critters.

It may be hard to see them in this reduced size version of the photograph, but they are the small fuzzy area near the lower right below the valve on the wall. On the full size image it is possible to make out a few paws and the vague outline of their faces.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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