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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Urban/Street

Pizza Jack’s No. 2

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Pizza Jack's No. 2
The dilapidated Pizza Jack’s No. 2 storefront, San Jose, California.

Pizza Jack’s No. 2. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

The dilapidated Pizza Jack’s No. 2 storefront, San Jose, California.

Perhaps there was once pizza at Pizza Jack’s No. 2, but it looks like those days are gone. Though the string of holiday lights along the roof seems sort of festive — perhaps left over from a previous year? The building is in an “interesting” area of town, one that exists between better neighborhoods in one direction and lots of urban redevelopment in the other. This area is one with a lot of potential, but also a lot of abandoned and run-down stuff that probably won’t be here much longer.

This may end up being an unusual example of a photograph that I’ll release in both color and monochrome versions. For obvious reasons, I was thinking “color!” when I made the photograph, but in post it became clear that it also works in monochrome, though with a rather different effect. There’s an old adage about going to black and white in photographs where the color doesn’t tell the story. Here, color does tell at least one important story, but darned if it doesn’t work without the color, too.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Strolling on Madison Avenue

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Strolling on Madison Avenue
Pedestrians stroll past street vendor stalls on Madison Avenue, Manhattan.

Strolling on Madison Avenue. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell.

Pedestrians stroll past street vendor stalls on Madison Avenue, Manhattan.

We did quite a bit of walking on our August Manhattan visit. We have a (perverse, according to New Yorkers) habit of visiting during August, something that dates back to the days of summer vacation from my teaching work. But August isn’t exactly the most pleasant time to be in New York City… unless you are a fan of hot weather and ridiculous humidity levels. As a Californian, where we deal with the temperatures but emphatically not the humidity, I’m not one of those fans. Fortunately for us, on this visit the weather was actually quite pleasant.

Our walk on this day took us down into midtown, where we first stopped for an outdoor breakfast along one of the thoroughfares. (Here I discovered something new to me: “All you can drink morning cocktails” — you pay a higher fee and get bottomless cocktails for 90 minutes. Uh, no. Just no. We did not do that!) We resumed out walk, looped over and past the UN Plaza and then heading back toward the center of town, eventually heading back uptown on Madison, which appeared to have been closed for some sort of street market or fair.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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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: Wildlife

A Seal’s Life, Part III

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A Seal's Life, Part III
A solitary elephant seal nappping on a Southern California beach.

A Seal’s Life, Part III. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary elephant seal nappping on a Southern California beach.

Here is one more — and probably the last for now — in the little “Seal’s Life” series. (I resisted the temptation to call it “lounging seals” or “lazy seals” or similar.) The photographs in the set all came from a very brief visit to an easily accessible location along the shoreline below the Big Sur coast. We took that longer route on a drive to Southern California, and we decided to stop as we passed this spot, despite having stopped there many times before and despite the somewhat uninspiring lighting conditions. It is hard to resist visiting these critters!

In the other posts I mentioned the contrast between the appearance of these creatures on land, where they are somewhere in the lazy to lumbering zone, and their purported speed and grace in the water. I’m not a diver, so I’ve never seen the latter — I just get to see (and hear and smell…) them on the beach. On the day we visited, almost all of them were engaging in pretty much the same activity as this one, namely not much activity at all. The head lifted from time to time, a flipper of sand was sent onto the back, a seal rolled over… but the whole scene was mostly one of apparent sloth.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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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: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

A Seal’s Life, Part II

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A Seal's Life, Part II
A group of elephant seals lounging on a Southern California beach.

A Seal’s Life, Part II. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of elephant seals lounging on a Southern California beach.

If you thought that the earlier photograph on a young elephant seal was the only one in the series… you were wrong! I have several more to share before I’m done. To be honest, photographing this group was almost an after-thought. We were passing though the area on our way to another destination and, well, why not stop? Even though we’ve been there many times before. So we pulled out for a break and walked the fancy trail along the edge of the bluff to a point where I could overall a big group of these big critters on the beach.

Elephant seal are, of course, impressive — mostly, but not entirely, in good ways. (About that not entirely part, their manners, uh, don’t exactly conform to what we were likely taught as children. There are a lot of gross noises, some random fighting, and more. Oh, and have you heard about the smell?) For animals that are reportedly skillful hunters and quite graceful swimmers, on land they look awkward and, to be honest, like large, lazy lumps of seal flesh. But the view we get of them is hardly the whole story, since we generally only can watch them where they haul out onto beaches… where they nap, lie about, make noises, flip sand on their backs, occasionally claim their bit of beach territory, and generally don’t do much at all — saving up their energy, I imagine, for the important work of hunting once they get back in the water.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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