Two apartment windows look out from an upper story apartment in Brooklyn, New York.
Looking through the curtains of this upper story apartment in Brooklyn, New York, the upper walls and rooftops of surround apartment buildings are visible.
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Black and white photograph of walls, windows, and roof lines of the side of Saint Patrick’s Church, San Francisco.
I don’t know the full history of this church in downtown San Francisco, but I do know that it is visually interesting. It has the appearance of an old cathedral, with the emphasis on old. Parts of the structure appear to be made of reinforced concrete, parts of brick, and a few sections of newer construction. Bits and pieces of all of that appear in this photograph, with some rather old and weathered materials in much of the structure, but with a much more modern-looking outbuilding at lower right.
While there is a large park (Yerba Buena Park) right across the street, much of the other surrounding architecture is quite modern for the most part. Most striking is the deep blue cubic structure of the Contemporary Jewish Museum right next door, but all around much taller and vastly more modern buildings are found. (Some of the light filling the shadows in this photograph is reflected from those buildings.)
I think that this photograph has a lot in common with a number of my photographs of mountains, especially the Sierra Nevada. In fact, I don’t think it is too hard to find parallels to some of the recent photographs of Mount Conness towering above the shorter Polly, Pywiack, and Medlicott Domes near Tenaya Lake along Tioga Pass Road.
Winter surf in a rocky bay with high clouds above as last sunset light strikes the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, California.
Another weekend. Another excuse to drive to San Francisco. Another excuse to come back the long way via the Coast Highway.
This time I actually had my sights set on a location a bit south of this. I’ve been to this iconic California lighthouse before (including the well-known November lighting of the original beacon) so I usually don’t stop. As I approached I thought the light looked pretty interesting and I liked the clouds I was seeing in the sky – it is more often either fogged in or perfectly clear. I actually drove right past the turnoff to the lighthouse, I was so intent on my original location. But, as I’ve written before, I’ve learned to not drive, walk, or otherwise propel myself past a good photographic opportunity, so I pulled out soon after this point and took a look back at the lighthouse and the rugged surf. From the vantage point where I stopped a bit south of the lighthouse the light was not good at all, but at least I was able to turn around and head back to where it was interesting.
Since the light was going fast, I quickly found a spot to park, grabbed my gear, and headed out toward the edge of the low bluff just north of the lighthouse – and on this side the warm evening light, softened by some fog and ocean spray, was very nice. I shot as the sun dropped to the horizon, then made a few other photographs of some very interesting sunset clouds – I’ll post them later – before getting back in the car and heading home.
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.
Nimitz Street with high fog and moonlight and ambient artificial lighting, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.
This is probably one of the iconic scenes for night photographers at the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. This shot looks up Nimitz Street near the waterfront and across railway tracks toward some of the core old buildings and beyond to the smoke stack of the power plant. It includes some of the huge overhead structures that were, as I understand it, used to move large ship components such as engines from the shops in which they were assembled to the ships under construction.
As is typical at night at Mare Island, the photograph includes a wild range of types of lighting. The 3/4 moon is partially responsible for illuminating the high fog, but the fog also picks up a warmer glow from a variety of types of lighting on the ground at Mare Island and beyond. The buildings are lit by some of the same light sources, but also by local security lightning and some street lights including tungsten, sodium vapor and perhaps even florescent sources. (When composing such shots I have to be very careful to place the camera in a position where direct light from these many sources is blocked by buildings, towers, and so forth.)
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.
