Tag Archives: building

Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pedestrian, Steps

September 20, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Sidewalk steps lead to a lower roadway, where a pedestrian crosses the street

This is another of the photographs done street photography style in Seattle in August, when we had a free day between some other events that took us to that city. On this morning we had started at Pike Place Market, the well-known tourist spot, and then walked south into the more central downtown area and eventually towards the south side of downtown.

I recall that the first time I visited downtown Seattle many years ago I was surprised by the multiple levels in some parts of the city, especially along the waterfront. Across the street from the water, a major highway runs high above on a viaduct. Between the viaduct and the main downtown there is a very short, steep hill (almost a cliff in some spots) leading up to the next level of streets above. (The multiple level effect is seen elsewhere, too, such as near the convention center.) As we walked along one of those upper streets, this steep staircase led to a lower level street and some parking, and a pedestrian continuing on toward the waterfront walks through the light coming down the cross street.

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

Fallen Leaves

September 15, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Fallen leaves on a grate along a Seattle downtown sidewalk

August 14 was a day off during the Seattle Opera “Ring” cycle – a series of four Wagner operas performed over a six-day period. For those who may not know, attending a full production of the Ring is almost a full-time occupation for the better part of a week. This may sound unbelievable to those who cannot imagine such a thing, but the four operas range from as short as about 2 1/2 hours up to well beyond five hours for the last one, Götterdämmerung – and once you start to “get it” and buy into the whole story, the music, and everything that goes with a production of this thing, well you’ll understand. In any case, on this first of two free days we had during the performances we decided to keep it simple and just head to downtown Seattle to walk around and see what we could photograph.

We took a fairly free-form approach to the shoot, starting near Pike Place Market where we knew we could get some coffee and then photographing people and stuff in and around the Market. We finished there and headed south through downtown, with no particular goal in mind. Eventually we got as far as the Art Wolfe Gallery, where we looked around a bit before heading north again. These street shoots are a lot of fun. I often shoot quickly, using a small camera and almost always just a prime, and I forego the usual tripod and gobs of heavy equipment. Subjects can range from people to buildings to little bits and pieces of urban detritus, and they frequently appear and are gone quickly. Something about this conjunction of lines and textures caught my attention, along with the faintly mossy green tint and the bit of accidental nature in the form of the leaves that had fallen on the metal grate.

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

Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows

August 26, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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

Detail, Pearl District Building

August 21, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Detail of a section of a Pearl District building with painted walls and bricks, Portland, Oregon

I grabbed this photograph while walking through an area of what seems to me like it might be called the outer Pearl District. (True Portlandians could no doubt narrow it down more specifically.) This is a very pleasant area of more-or-less downtown Portland that seems to gentrifying – with some elements left from an older era and many things seeming to be updated and changed.

This building is on a street with a number of older buildings – with enough bricks to make this earthquake-country person just a bit nervous. Aside from that, a lot of the buildings seem familiar to someone from the San Francisco Bay Area. As we walked past, several things grabbed my attention for no particular reason: the combination of red/brown and shades of green, the horizontal pipe interrupting the rough and painted over surface of the brick foundation, and the somewhat geometric quality of the composition.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: building

Pedestrian, Steps

Fallen Leaves

Pipes, Window, Stucco Wall, and Shadows

Detail, Pearl District Building

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.