Tag Archives: columns

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

Flag Makers

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Flag Makers
A complex landscape of steps, columns, braces, windows, reflections, and buildings

Flag Makers. San Francisco, California. January 3, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A complex landscape of steps, columns, braces, windows, reflections, and buildings

I made this photograph near the new, lower level entrance to the remodeled San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) during a visit around the start of the new year. The old entrance to the museum has now been augmented by a new entrance that leads into the newly added wing. A large installation fills the space on the very lowest level, and large windows open from there to the surrounding buildings and a stairway leading to the entrance one floor higher.

I love photographing in museums — for the architectural spaces and the people — and I photograph inside and around MOMA every time I visit. Some subjects are immediately obvious but other take a bit longer to figure out. This open area on the lower level is, for me, in the latter category. It immediately felt like a place to make photographs, but it has taken quite a few visits to begin to reveal its potential. This photograph is more or less a study of the many layers and angles found within and outside of this space, including layers of time between the very new museum and the very old brick wall just beyond the stairs.

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 and Amazon.
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Photographs: Night, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

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Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall
Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall

Support Columns, Purple and Green Wall. Mare Island Naval Ship Yard, Vallejo, California. March 11, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Night photograph of dilapidated building in green and purple, Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.

In contrast to the huge and somewhat garishly lit iconic towers and cranes of Mare Island, there are innumerable little quiet and hidden subjects to photograph. I think that most of us start with the obvious subjects and eventually, after shooting them many times, begin to look for these other possibilities. I photographed this in very low light, complicated by a bit of wind, and I could barely see the subject as I worked. (In order to focus I had to shine a small light on the edge of part of the structure.)

The colors were almost a bit of a surprise. At Mare Island there (or, in too many cases used to be, now that the lighting has been “modernized”) a wild variation in lighting types. There is often the moonlight. A glow comes across the water from Vallejo. Sodium vapor lamps can produce a sort of sickly yellow color. Tungsten light is warm colored, and fluorescent light can be very strange. As a consequence, the colors of this nighttime world are more about the colors of the lighting than the colors of the subjects themselves. The side of this building, which is probably quite drab in daylight, picked up subtle green and purple tones under the artificial light.

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

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Columns, Whitney Museum

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Columns, Whitney Musuem
Repeating forms of cylindrical columns

Columns, Whitney Museum. Manhattan, New York City. December 27, 2015. © Copyright 20165G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Repeating forms of cylindrical columns

I admit it — photographing at the new Whitney Museum in Manhattan almost felt like play. The building is interesting in and off itself, but especially interesting on the high and open outdoor terraces that thrust out from the building toward the city. Although there are no people in this photograph — in fact, I had to take some care to ensure that was the case — the location was also a prime place to photograph people.

These columns occupy a corner, up against a wall, on one of the upper floor outdoor terraces. Their positions allow light to shine on them from multiple directions and on this very cloudy day the light was soft and luminous. Although this is the sort of thing that I might prefer to shoot from the tripod, I was working in street photographer mode and therefore had to shoot handheld, carefully lining up the verticals, trying to obscure a few places where the background shone through between the columns, and then waiting for people to pass by and not be in the shot.

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 and Amazon.
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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

Woman at Crosswalk

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Woman at Crosswalk
A women waits alone at a cross walk for the light to change, San Francisco.

Woman at Crosswalk. San Francisco, California. September 5, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A women waits alone at a crosswalk for the light to change, San Francisco.

One thing that might surprise some folks about my street photograph is that I do not think that it is unrelated to my nature and landscape photography. I think that it all connects together as “photography,” whether the subject is a mountain or a building, a bird or a person. I also believe that photographing more than one type of subject — which some might regard as a dilution of vision — actually makes me better at seeing all kinds of subjects as photographs. Shooting street, where things often happen quite quickly and in the midst of a lot of visual stimuli, forces me to be “on” all the time, to see potential subjects quickly, to recognize things that work instinctively, and to look for juxtapositions. And photographing natural landscape subjects informs the way I see the urban landscape.

One obvious potential thread in urban photograph is the juxtaposition of individual figures against a constructed and sometimes massive and impersonal urban landscape. I often look for these “stages” and then watch for people to appear and populate them. This location can actually be a fairly busy street corner, but here I first found the massive stone building, then waited for the scene to clear with the exception of the solitary woman waiting for the light.

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 and Amazon.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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