“Spanish Caravan, Liverpool” — A beer ad on a wall in the Liverpool Ropewalks district.
This scene was on a corner near the place we stayed in the Ropewalks district of Liverpool this spring. We had gone out for a long walk and run into a bit of rain, perhaps obvious from the wet street and sidewalk. I think that the large figure on the wall is meant to look like a guy who is happy with his beer. But I think there is also something just a bit ominous about that unnatural grin on a figure towering above the street and peeking out between buildings.
An arch structure at the High Line Park, Manhattan.
I didn’t even pause long enough to find out what this structure was. I was attracted to its form and its appearance in a space full of other linear forms, and by the low-angle and rather stark late-day light coming from the right. I suspect that it is some sort of commercial construction, but who knows? From appearances, it could be a monolith in the vein of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” though I doubt that this one was left by aliens.
The location is in Manhattan, along a section of the High Line elevated park that passes under the Standard Hotel just before the park terminates at the new Whitney Museum. This was at the end of our rather long walk that began all the way up at the west side of Central Park, during which I photographed everything from street scenes to architecture, trees to… this thing.
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.
Last sunset light on clearing storm clouds above the Sierra Nevada, photographed from a commercial airline flight
We spent the past week in New York City, visiting family and hanging out and doing some photography. (More urban/street photography from the visit will be coming soon.) Our final day there started out with driving rain, but cleared it up in time for us to make our way to the Newark airport for our flight back to California. There were rumors that the storm front passing over the east coast might interfere with our flight, but we were airborne only a few minutes later than scheduled, though the pilot came on the address system to let us know that they had been given a much more southerly route to follow, due to storms further north, and that this might delay our expected 8:45 PM arrival by about 15 minutes or so.
Most people might regard that as a minor inconvenience, but I quickly calculated that this would probably put us right above the Sierra Nevada almost exactly at sunset, possibly providing some interesting opportunities for aerial landscape photography. An hour or so before landing the pilot again came on the system to announce that storms above the Sierra might call create some turbulence. Again, I thought that sounded fine as long as that meant great clouds. There must have been monsoon conditions, as there were already thick clouds well east of the range, and before long I could see a wall of very high storm clouds stretching along the length of the Sierra ahead of us. In fact, the clouds were high enough that they blocked the sun, and I began to doubt that anything photographically interesting would occur. Apparently the crew was looking for an opening through the clouds, since they soon turned a bit to the left/south, and I could see an opening ahead with colorful backlit clouds. As we passed to the south of the cloud wall — and I never could figure out exactly where we were above the range — the last light of the setting sun passed almost horizontally over these thinning clouds, producing brilliant colors and allowing a brief view of snow on the mountains below.
Exterior detail of the One Maritime Plaza building, San Francisco.
This photograph focuses on details of the exterior frame of Maritime Plaza Building, in the general area of the financial district and not far from the Embarcadero and San Francisco’s waterfront. I photographed in “interesting” light – the weather provided a combination of high clouds, lower clouds that were dropping sprinkles of rain, and incoming ocean fog. Oddly, even with tall these sources of atmospheric opacity, there was still some light. Some came through the clouds, while some came from nearby areas that were a bit more clear.
As I have been doing a bit more recently, I chose to shoot towards a corner of the building, allowing the darker side on the right to seem to recede a bit. Meanwhile, the strongest ambient light fell on the “front” of the building facing to the left. I chose a black and white rendition of this photograph partly because, frankly, there wasn’t much interesting color in this subject, but also because I felt that black and white abstracted the image a bit more.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
