Tag Archives: building

Night Photography, Photographs: Architecture

Porch and Shadows

June 14, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ambient light, shadows, architecture and vegetation on a night photography shoot.

In November 2012 I joined my friends from The Nocturnes, the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group, for a get-together and shoot at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard. Since this was an “alumni night” event, there was a certain ritual to be followed. Folks who were new to Mare Island arrived early to tour the site – the first west coast naval ship yard, with history going back well over 150 years. A bit later, the “veterans” arrived to join everyone else for events that began with sharing of photographs, continued with pizza, and then led to a night of, well, night photography nearby.

The weather was not promising. We knew that a weather front was on its way, and we hoped – though we probably knew better – that it might hold off long enough to complete some photography. (Those of us with smartphones, checking the weather radar updates, knew better.) The tell-tale south wind was rising as we headed out, and within moments of starting to photograph an old wooden building the rain began. At first I continued to shoot under my umbrella, but soon it was just plain too wet to stay out. Fortunately, we had arranged for access to one of the historic officer’s quarters buildings and photographing inside and around this building quickly became the fall-back plan. I ended up on the front porch with Mark Citret and Tim Baskerville where we intermittently talked photography and made a few shots of things that didn’t require us to stand in the rain. At one point I parked myself near an end of the old porch and made this photograph of the shadow of my rig falling the wall of the building.

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

June 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

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.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

June 2, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Midday light inside beneath the skylight in the atrium of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

For the time being I’m not going to write all that I could write about this photograph – that would be far too much to post here. Nonetheless, this might be a slightly longer “photo post” than usual.

The subject is the skylight in the turret at the top of the atrium at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Just below the skylight there is a catwalk that crosses from one side of the cylindrical upper area of the atrium to the other, and this is a place of magical light in almost any conditions. I visited this past Friday since the museum closes after today (June 2, 2013) for two years for renovation and expansion, and I wanted to have one last chance to wander around in the museum and I wanted to see the wonderful Garry Winogrand exhibit.

During the “wandering” part of my visit I went to this catwalk and thought about how I could photograph it. It is almost embarrassing to photograph in this spot, since it is one of the most obvious iconic places to grab an iPhone shot, and many other visitors were doing just that. I first made a few symmetrical photographs looking up at the skylight in a more direct way and then thought that I’d try a few “off kilter” shots, perhaps with the Winogrand images – which often tilt and twist in surprising ways – still in my mind. Having also just spent time in the museum’s wonderful exhibit of classic black and white work by other photographers, I was in a bit of a black and white state of mind, and I was pretty certain that this would end up as a monochrome image.

(For those who wonder about such things, this photograph was made with the small Fujifilm X-E1 camera and the wonderful Fujifilm XF 14mm f/2.8 lens.)

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Blue Shed, Evening

May 28, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A metal-walled blue shade beneath an abandoned industrial building in “blue hour” evening light, near Vallejo, California

This photograph belongs to a genre that might be called Almost-Night Photography. I was at this location to do night photography, in fact, but for once decided to also try shooting the area a bit before the daylight disappeared. So perhaps 45 minutes before sunset I stopped what I was doing (eating pizza, actually…) and drove around a bit looking for “golden hour” photograph opportunities in this abandoned industrial area. I started a good distance from the location of this shot and did my sunset shoot in a more open area full of run down and falling down ruined buildings. After that I headed back towards an area of less-dilapidated but also virtually abandoned buildings.

So I arrived here a bit after sunset as the so-called “blue hour” light was coming on. The structure was open to the west where the post-sunset sky was visible over San Francisco Bay. Some clouds near the horizon still had the bright and orange-yellow colors of sunset, but the larger part of the sky was transitioning toward deep blue. As a result, any place in this image that was in shadow was primarily illuminated by the very blue overhead sky, while the upper windows of the taller building still reflected some of those last bits of color, though they were distorted by the uneven arrangement of the windows to create interesting patterns that are perhaps better seen in a larger presentation of the photograph. There are three buildings in the shot. The foreground round-roofed shed seems to be some sort of storage or work space that might have been added later. Behind that and to the right is a lighter-colored building that seems like it might have held some offices or similar facilities. Beyond that are the mostly glass walls of a very large industrial building that seems to be at least a full block long. These giant old buildings intrigue me in many ways, but the number of windows seems remarkable. I assume that they were designed this way so that people could work inside with little or no supplemental electrical light, and the interior spaces of such buildings can contain beautiful light during the day.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: building

Porch and Shadows

Brick Wall, Pearl District

Turret Skylight, SFMOMA

Blue Shed, Evening

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