Tag Archives: concrete

Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District

Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District - Seattle Viaduct and the blue roof on a building, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington
Seattle Viaduct and the blue roof on a building, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington

Viaduct and Blue Roof, Fremont District. Seattle, Washington. May 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Seattle Viaduct and the blue roof of a building, Fremont District, Seattle, Washington.

Yet another photograph from the early May photo walk I joined up with in the Fremont district of Seattle. A viaduct crosses the water high above this section of Seattle, and the structure more or less dominates portions of the view here. After shooting some of the buildings near where the photo walk began, I decided to head over towards this bridge and see what I could find to shoot there. I shot straight up at it from underneath, towards it from further away, along its length, and eventually made a few close-up photographs of details.

For this photograph I decided to create a more or less abstract juxtaposition of the underside of the bridge, almost straight overhead, and a bit of the underside of a building with a blue roof. Usually I might prefer to shoot such a thing from the tripod and perhaps even combine multiple exposures in post as a way of dealing with the wide dynamic range, but this time I simply composed the shot handheld and made a single exposure. Well, actually I made two slightly different versions, but still. :-)

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.
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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.

Brown Wall with Pipes and Worn Paper Figures, Fremont District

Brown Wall with Pipes and Worn Paper Figures, Fremont District - Worn paper figures glued to a brown wall with pipes and conduit, Fremont District, Seattle Washington
Worn paper figures glued to a brown wall with pipes and conduit, Fremont District, Seattle Washington

Brown Wall with Pipes and Worn Paper Figures, Fremont District. Seattle, Washington. May 5, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Worn paper figures glued to a brown wall with pipes and conduit, Fremont District, Seattle Washington.

This was one of the first photographs I made on my early May visit to the Fremont district of Seattle with a group on a “Seattle Photowalk” between Fremont and the Gas Works Park. Although they were going to make an evening of it, I was only able to join them for about an hour – but it turned out to be a productive hour as I came back with nearly a dozen photographs that I like.

Once I got in the spirit of the place, I found the visual opportunities in Fremont to be quite interesting. There is a lot of the expected urban funkiness, with old buildings, small business crammed in odd corners, old structures, a waterfront, bridges overhead, and a few truly odd features such as the Lenin statue where the group met up. It is the sort of place I might initially look at and wonder what I’m going to shoot, only to discover ten minutes later that there almost more potential subjects than I know what to do with. This section of a brown wall was one of my first subjects. Initially the interesting pattern of crisscrossing conduit and pipes caught my attention, but when I looked closer I noticed the remnants of what might have been a small collection of paper figures glued to the wall.

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.
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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.

Construction Site, Cyclone Fence

Construction Site, Cyclone Fence - A of new building under construction in the Mission Bay are of San Francisco, as seen through a cyclone fence.
A of new building under construction in the Mission Bay are of San Francisco, as seen through a cyclone fence.

Construction Site, Cyclone Fence. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A of new building under construction in the Mission Bay are of San Francisco, as seen through a cyclone fence.

Just across McCovey Cove from San Francisco’s AT&T Park is an area where a lot of construction is currently occurring. The area is visually interesting right now partly because of the juxtapositions of really old and run-down stuff, some of the typical empty urban areas filled with parking lots and other temporary facilities, and a lot of change as new buildings go up. On this morning I walked into an area that not all that long ago had an abandoned feeling during the morning hours – and how it was buzzing with activity. Huge steel pilings stretch toward the sky, construction zones are fenced off, and hundreds of workers and lots of heavy equipment are busily at work. Yet even this is only a temporary state that will lead before long to yet another change once the buildings are complete, the construction workers go away, and new businesses and residents move in.

At this site I had first photographed the towering steel pilings. They created a feeling of a sort of odd, abstract monument as they pointed toward the sky. (A photograph of that will appear, or may already have appeared, here at the blog.) Then I walked up next to the fence surrounding the construction site and was impressed by the organized (I presume!) confusion and complexity of what was going on at ground level. Every inch of the site seemed to be occupied by something – rebar ready for concrete pouring, workers operating various pieces of large and small machinery, engineers and planners inspecting the work, the beginnings of towers and walls rising here and there. If anything in the urban landscape comes close to the level of complexity that may be found in the natural landscape, it just might be a place like this!

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.
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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.

Door Number Three

Door Number Three - A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.
A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

Door Number Three. San Francisco, California. April 20, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A loading dock door (#3) and a dilapidated and worn side door in a concrete wall, San Francisco.

There is not a whole lot to write about this photograph, except that it is another in a sequence of photographs that I made in a small alley off of the Embarcadero in San Francisco, an alley that extends between buildings toward the waterfront and which has often been locked up when I have walked by there previously. Since it and several similar alley ways were open on this morning, I took the opportunity to wander into them and photograph some of the old buildings that sit on these waterfront piers, focusing mostly on small details.

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 | FacebookGoogle+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.