Tag Archives: california

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Formerly Bob’s Auto Service

May 17, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

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.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, Granite, And Spring Snow

May 16, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Gentle spring snow flurries on Yosemite Valley meadows and forest

Now that we are well into spring and it feels more like summer here in California, it is fun to take a final look back at winter in the photographic rear-view mirror. It is hard to believe that it was only weeks ago that I was photographing in falling snow in the Valley! When I returned there one week after making this photograph, virtually all traces of the snow had melted and it felt more like late spring or summer.

The storm that came through the Valley during this visit wasn’t a big one. Typical of most “shoulder season” storms in the Sierra, it only dropped an inch or two of snow, and it passed quickly. But for a moment all of the sensory elements of winter made one final stand — the blue-gray color of the scene, the distant cliffs disappearing into falling snow and clouds, and the colors muted to an almost monochrome quality. What the photograph cannot capture, but may possibly suggest, are things like the cool dampness and the changes to sound on these days — a quiet stillness where the sound-space seems larger somehow.

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

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Palm And Tarot Reader

May 14, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The front window of a palm and tarot card reader business

There are many aspects of the urban landscape that fascinate me. It is often far more colorful than the natural world, and there are frequently interesting geometries and compositional potentials. Objects become more interesting as they exhibit weathering and wear, yet they are frequently found juxtaposed with perfectly constructed new objects. Text, in signs and elsewhere, plays a part — ranging from its own geometry and form to possibly ironic combinations. And, of course, the people are subjects and they constantly change. And odd, attractive little oddities abound — as in this little scene.

I didn’t think too much about it as I made the photograph — I tend to work rather intuitively — but looking at it now I’m sure that several things caught my attention. The juxtaposition of spiritual and occult imagery and text was at the top of the list, especially combined with the banality of the location. The patterns of color also interest me, from yellow at the left, through the reds of the window edge and neon sign, to the blue shadow light at the far right. There are also small elements that you might miss, like all of the locks on the door at the edge of the frame. And that doesn’t remotely exhaust the list of things that you could see here…

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Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Small Aspen Trees, Autumn

May 13, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A tightly spaced grove of small Eastern Sierra aspen trees with fall color

I like to say that it is never too soon to start thinking about fall color… though I forgive you if you aren’t sure that May is quite yet the right time. To be honest, I came across this photograph of a familiar subject earlier today while I was backtracking through my archive of older raw files. I have a bunch of urban/street photographs queued up for posting here soon, but I feel like sharing a few more natural photographs first.

The location is in a popular area for Eastern Sierra Nevada fall color, but there is nothing exactly iconic about this particular grove – though it is a place that I’ve returned to every fall for years. I suspect that something about it caught my attention on my first visit, and that whatever that “something” is, it is not a feature that every viewer will spot. I recall stopping here the first time I visited. It was late in the day and the sun was about to drop behind the surrounding high ridges. I was surprised to see this densely spaced grove of slender trees, with trunks exposed below their fall color crowns. I stopped and made a few photographs, and the spot has become one of my touchstones in the Sierra Nevada.

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

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: california

Formerly Bob’s Auto Service

Forest, Granite, And Spring Snow

Palm And Tarot Reader

Small Aspen Trees, Autumn

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