Tag Archives: city

Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Structures and Objects

San Francisco Skyline, Bridge Cables

June 13, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Golden Gate Bridge Cables silhouetted against hazy morning light on San Francisco Bay and city skyline

Back in March I took a day to go up into Marin County to do some early spring photography, thinking about the possibility of shooting in the redwood forest at Muir Woods – which was, in fact, where I ended up. I left well before dawn, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge right about the time the sun was coming up. Being a big fan of shooting in atmospheric haze of all sorts, the very thin layer of fog spreading across the entrance to the bay was enough to make me pull over and make a few photographs of the bay and the city.

This was an unusual sort of fog. We are more familiar with the banks of thick fog coming in off of the Pacific and flowing in through the Golden Gate, covering the bridge and rising over the shoulders or even the summits of the hills, often with a fairly sharp boundary between fog and clear air. This fog, however, was thin and more widespread and did not form the familiar “bank.” It was closer to translucent than to opaque, and the outline of the downtown San Francisco skyline was visible, though all details were muted. The identity of the foreground structure probably needs no explanation!

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: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Utah Fall Color, Meadows

October 28, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful autumn foliage of aspen and other trees near a meadow in the Dixie National Forest near Cedar City, Utah.

The opportunity to photograph this wild fall color resulted from the second “random ride” of the afternoon – with “random ride” being a family description of a drive that ends up going where no one would have predicted. After a brief afternoon visit to Cedar City, Utah to take care of some minor business involving coffee, we headed back up into the mountains to the east of town. Driving along, I spotted another road that branched off in a potentially promising direction, and without so much as a glance at the map I turned right and headed up a canyon.

Since I spotted some interesting color right away, and because the road looked like it would climb to elevations where I knew the color was good, I continued on it. The hunch paid off. As we ascended, wide open vistas appeared across a panorama ranging from south to north, and new and interesting colorful foliage continued to appear. We finally ended up at location where the road crossed one of the most colorful autumn foliage displays I have seen. After photographing a nearby grove of trees right above us, I turned my camera the other direction and found this composition that includes a wild assortment of colorful autumn trees (mostly but not entirely aspens) leading down to the edge of a small meadow.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Aspen Forest, Near Cedar Breaks

October 27, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Autumn colors in extensive aspen forests extend into the distance near Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah

This was a serendipitous photograph. We were driving down a main road from Cedar Grove towards the lowlands when I caught site of a decent looking gravel side road that looked like it might head in the direction of some interesting and extensive aspen forests that were in full fall color – so I quickly turned off and headed down this road. It passed through huge stands of aspen trees as it descended toward the south, and eventually I felt that I had gone as far as time allowed, so I turned around and started back up the road with the sun at my back.

At about this time, a high thin layer of clouds moved over. This is more or less ideal for daytime photography of subjects like the aspens since it softens the light just a bit and moderates the harsh shadows and extreme contrasts that are otherwise found during daytime hours. With this tree color and this light, it was mostly a matter of finding some scene that would fit together compositionally, and here I found a bit of open meadow between colorful trees, along with a distant view to further aspen covered hills almost as far as I could see.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: city

San Francisco Skyline, Bridge Cables

Brick Wall, Pearl District

Utah Fall Color, Meadows

Aspen Forest, Near Cedar Breaks

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